


up in smoke/down in flames

by wonuza



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Action & Romance, Crimes & Criminals, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn, side chansol, wonseul siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 04:23:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13473606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonuza/pseuds/wonuza
Summary: Pulling off a job is dead simple.  Not that it’s easy, necessarily, just simple.  Honestly, these intricate heists you see in movies—Soonyoung doesn’t have a clue where that comes from.  Why go to all that trouble when it’s so straightforward?  All you need is a target—once you’ve got your target, you study the target—then finally, boom, blast off, hasta la vista, target goes down.  Somewhere along the way you might steal some money, maybe some valuables—regardless.  Simple.Jeon Wonwoo, on the other hand, is a job that might take some effort.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #8: Action/Romance AU (e.g. spies, assassins, supervillains), Enemies to Partners in Crime to Lovers, leather, flirting, resolved sexual tension.
> 
> welp, hi. this was not my original prompt, but inspiration was Not coming, so i switched to this one, and very quickly had Too Much inspiration and things. got out of hand. i have UHHH a Lot More Than This written but it’s not done so HERE WE ARE!!! i am very nervous about doing chapters but i guess we’re gonna see how it goes jfkldjsg.
> 
> a couple things to note:  
> \- everyone is aged up a few years  
> \- also pretty much everyone is a bad guy/morally grey in some way. if anyone does bad things in this au or if bad things get done to them it’s not because i don’t like them!!! it’s just that. yknow. The Prompt Was Villains  
> \- i have researched a lot for this, but i still have no idea how bombs work and i don’t have any idea if half the things in here are actually possible. sorry if any bomb experts read this. or crime experts. i am very much admittedly neither of those things. i tried very very hard though.
> 
> finally, yes. this is this fucking long and it’s one chapter. SMACKS WINTERSTAR DEADLINE ON THE ASS AND SENDS IT GALLOPING INTO THE SUNSET..........YEET

Pulling off a job is dead simple.  Not that it’s _easy_ , necessarily, just simple.  Honestly, these intricate heists you see in movies—Soonyoung doesn’t have a clue where that comes from.  Why go to all that trouble when it’s so straightforward?  All you need is a target—once you’ve got your target, you study the target—then finally, boom, blast off, hasta la vista, target goes down.  Somewhere along the way you might steal some money, maybe some valuables—regardless.  Simple.

Sure, the planning stages provide for some stressful nights and some dedication, but what career _doesn’t_ require that?  Soonyoung doesn’t fraternize with many other people in his profession, but he imagines they’re all going about it in much more painstaking detail than is necessary—the hardest part by _far_ is building the bombs, and even that he’s got down to an art by now.  Maybe it’s just that Soonyoung’s always been good with details, a quick thinker, a smooth talker.  Maybe it’s that he finds it easy to predict how people will react to—pretty much anything, but especially the threat of a bomb going off.  Maybe he’s lucky.  He just doesn’t _scheme_ like his fellow criminals seem to; his mind just...clicks the pieces into place without much fuss.  His plans aren’t usually airtight—he’s always ready for things to go wrong in a second, and they have before—but they’re clean enough that if things start to go wrong, he defuses whatever explosive he’s left laying around and makes his getaway with a smile on his face, satisfied for having caused even a small ruckus.  He may not be the most meticulous, he may leave far too much to chance, but the vast majority of his jobs are so tight that the cops are no closer to catching him today than they were after his very first time.

He doesn’t like to think of himself as the cartoony supervillain the media enjoys painting him as.  The papers are always wondering what his motive is, why he’s doing this—he thinks it’s funny they think he needs one.  Of course there’d been a catalyst for his first job, but since then—it’s just fun, seeing how much he can take, how much damage he can do, and it’s fun knowing that it’s _a lot._  He gets this weird, giddy catharsis out of watching things crumble to the ground.  Maybe that makes him the cartooniest supervillain of all.  Nevertheless, he’s never killed anyone, not on purpose.  It’s just messy, to have all those snuffed out lives on his hands—that’s why he hits places that are empty, or manages to empty them himself, and even the poison darts he uses in emergencies are non-lethal—that’s gotta count for something, right?  

Soonyoung thinks it should definitely count for something.

The whispers he gets of other criminals’ thoughts of him are usually that he’s somehow beneath them, but he’s pretty sure they’re just jealous.  It’s probably because people call the cops on them, whereas nine times out of ten if a civilian catches him on the job, they ask him for a selfie.  It’s a whole _thing_ with the people in this city, and it amuses Soonyoung to no end.  Chan (his brother—not by blood, but Soonyoung thinks it means much more to _decide_ someone is your brother, and they’ve got enough impeccably forged paperwork to convince anyone who questions it anyway,) says it’s because he’s blowing up government buildings and billion dollar companies, stirring rebellion in the hearts of the masses.  Some people—hippies and millennials, mostly—even call him a hero, say he’s protesting corporate corruption and elitism and white collar crime and—blah, blah, blah.  His stolen millions would probably go a long way disproving that particular theory.

They’ll probably say the same about tonight’s job, but he doesn’t care.  It’s this gorgeous office building all set to open tomorrow; all the people are surely thrilled at the prospect of setting up their cubicles, hanging their family photos, getting down to business.  They’ve _just_ finished construction, finished furnishing the insides:  it’s perfect, pristine.  It’s a triumph of architecture.  It’s a physical representation of seven months’ work.  It’s the labor of love of hundreds of people.  It’s coming the _fuck_ down in 3, 2…

“Yeehaw,” says Soonyoung from behind his facemask, and triggers the detonator.

 

— — — — —

 

It always feels extra quiet after a job, and the next morning is no different.  Soonyoung stretches out on his bed, finally feeling the ache in his muscles the past few late nights have caused him.  It does take a steady hand and an enormous amount of concentration to build delicate explosives, after all.  He yawns silently, sits up silently—he doesn’t want to disturb the extra quietness yet.  He made enough noise last night.  

The room is small, cozy, and relatively plain:  it could be anyone’s room.  That’s the point.  The person Soonyoung lives as when he’s not heisting or planning or exploding something—this is his room, not Soonyoung’s, not really.  Soonyoung makes his way out of not-Soonyoung’s bedroom on tiptoe, so as not to wake Chan or Hansol—only to find Hansol already awake and lounging on the couch with a cup of coffee.  He looks up over the rim of it at Soonyoung as he takes a sip, raising his eyebrows in acknowledgment.  Soonyoung waves sleepily, heading to get his own coffee, and as he does Hansol starts speaking.  “You’re gonna love this article.  ‘The city awakens to yet another pile of rubble where a building once stood, courtesy of who else but Hoshi, our local masked vigilante with a penchant for demolition.’”  Soonyoung beams, and curtsies groggily.  “‘The target, this time, was the newly finished Ahn office complex, set to open for business today.’  The end is my favorite part, though: ‘Is this some kind of pointless, juvenile statement?  A cry for help?  Or just the workings of an attention-hungry sociopath?’”

“Sociopath?” Soonyoung says, frowning as he sits down.  Attention-hungry, that’s fair.  But sociopath?  “That’s new.  And offensive, right?”  He tilts his head.  “That’s offensive, I think.  Who’s writing this stuff?”

Hansol laughs.  “Someone called Wen Junhui, I guess...I would have gone with ‘narcissist,’ personally, with how you spray paint your name everywhere.”  He holds up his phone, which displays a photo of Soonyoung’s handiwork.  “‘Hoshi was here,’ _really_?  Are you in middle school?”  

“Don’t forget the star-shaped fireworks,” says Soonyoung, flashing Hansol a peace sign and a smarmy grin before taking his phone and scrolling quickly down to a picture of this so-called Wen Junhui.  He looks like exactly the so-genuine-it-seems-fake kind of _nice_ Soonyoung hates.  Soonyoung sticks his tongue out at his tiny photo before handing the phone back to Hansol.

He takes it, and doesn’t look at Soonyoung when he speaks again, voice low, tone serious.  “Did anyone see you?”

And this—this is why Soonyoung hadn’t loved the idea of Chan telling his boyfriend about him, even if they’d been together for over a year.  Hansol’s protective, which is _good,_ except he hasn’t got his head around the fact that Chan doesn’t need protecting from Soonyoung.  Soonyoung gets this feeling down in his stomach when Hansol looks at him like this, like Chan’s floating in a river and Soonyoung’s the brick tied to his ankle, and he hates it.  He hates it because they get along well otherwise, all three of them, together; Hansol honestly hadn’t even taken the revelation of Soonyoung’s job badly.  It’s just that there’s always this _thing_ between Soonyoung and Hansol, because of Chan.  Because what Soonyoung does puts Chan in danger.  It’s understandable, he supposes, but—honestly.  Chan is Soonyoung’s favorite person on earth, and he’s a criminal, not an asshole, or an idiot.  He knows what he’s doing, and he loves Chan, and god damn it, he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

“No one saw,” he responds, measured and careful.  It’s barely out before Chan appears from his bedroom.  The tension dissipates immediately, because it’s not _really_ tension, it’s just Hansol worrying and Soonyoung being offended that he’s worrying.  Certainly nothing to make Chan feel bad over, and he would feel bad if they didn’t get along.  In any case, Hansol seems to be satisfied with the answer, and a lazy, lopsided grin spreads across his face as he leans up to kiss Chan before settling back into the couch.

They’re sweet.  Soonyoung’s just happy Chan is happy.  The whole reason he’d agreed to filling Hansol in is how obvious it is that Chan is the most important thing in his life, and that’s enough to prove Hansol’s trustworthy.  

Hopefully, anyway.  He’s seriously fucked otherwise.

(There’s also the fact that Soonyoung owes Chan a million, billion times over, more than he could ever dream of paying back, so he could ask for anything and Soonyoung would agree to it.)

He hears Chan say something, then, and it snaps him out of his thoughts.  “Mm?” he asks.

Chan grins, amused.  “Your hearing is getting even worse.  I said, how’d it go?”

“Oh.”  Chan raises his eyebrows expectantly, and Soonyoung can’t help but smile.  “It was great.  It looked so fucking cool, Channie—the top floor was still totally intact as the building was collapsing, right up until the last explosive got triggered.  It was epic.”

It’s stupidly cute and probably a little fucked up how excited Chan gets over this stuff.  He claps his hands, smiling.  “Ugh, I wish I could have seen.  I still want you to let me go with you one of these times.”

“And I’m still never taking you,” Soonyoung says, shaking a finger at him.  “I don’t need _your_ hearing going on the fritz, you can’t even keep up with headphones, let alone hearing aids.”

“Come on, I’ll bring Hansol—that’s a romantic date, right?” he asks, turning to Hansol, who laughs.

“I’m not sure about romantic, but it would be pretty cool.”

Soonyoung grins, because he thinks Hansol actually means it—not that it surprises him.  Regardless of Hansol’s feelings toward Soonyoung’s work in reference to Chan, one glorious, uniting, undisputed fact remains:  explosions are fucking cool.

Once Hansol’s made lunch plans with Chan between their work and class schedules, he stands to leave.  “Good work, or, congrats, I guess?” he says to Soonyoung, scratching his head.  “I never really know what to say.  Dope explosion?”

Chan snorts, and Soonyoung rolls his eyes in amusement.  “It was a dope _implosion_ , if you want to be slightly more accurate.  But the terminology can get tricky.  The sentiment is appreciated.”

Hansol nods seriously, then opens the door, calling “Bye, Chan.  Later, Minjun,” over his shoulder.

It’s early, and Soonyoung’s still tired, and it takes an extra second for his mind to register that that’s him.  (He doesn’t even remember the last time someone other than Chan called him by his real name—he can’t go giving away all his secrets, after all, even to trustworthy people.)  He glances apologetically at Chan.  “Later!” he says, raising his voice as the door closes.

They listen for the sound of Hansol’s car pulling away before speaking.  Chan shoots him a look.  “You’d think after literal years with the same fake name, you’d be able to remember it.”

“Give me a break, it’s not like he thinks anything of it.”  Soonyoung stretches his arms up, feeling his back crack in a few satisfying places, and sinks back into the sofa.  “Besides, all the adrenaline has left my body since last night and now I’m on a _real_ low.”

Chan gives a small chuckle.  “Any idea what you’re doing next?”

“Nope.  I was thinking maybe a church, but I’m not sure.”

“Why a church?”

He raises his cup to his lips, smirking.  “Because it would be _blast-phemous,_ ” he says before taking a very smug drink.

Chan does this half-groan, half-cackle, while looking half-ashamed, half-proud.  “ _God_ , you’re the worst,” he says.

Soonyoung lifts his leg to kick Chan lightly with one socked foot.  “Fuck you, you love me.”

His attention is back on his phone, and not Soonyoung, but he’s still smiling.  “If you do it tonight, can you pick up some laundry soap on the way home?”

It’s moments like these Soonyoung is made hyper aware of how much he adores Chan.  The fact that he’s so casually accepting of and fine with what Soonyoung does despite how they met is frankly astounding.  (It had been a botched job—Soonyoung’s _only_ botched job—and it hadn’t been his fault but, really, that’s a technicality, and Chan should hate him, but he doesn’t, which kind of only makes him feel guiltier.)

“I’m not doing it tonight, Channie, damn.  I’m good, but I’m not _that_ good.  I can’t put something together in eight fucking hours.”

Chan gets up, motions for Soonyoung’s empty mug, and heads to the kitchen with both of them.  Soonyoung imagines the small _clink_ as he places them in the sink, since he’s too far away to hear it.  “Good, honestly.  I know how much it takes out of you.  You should rest.”  Truly, Soonyoung can’t believe Chan’s the younger of the two of them, and he certainly can’t believe they aren’t blood relatives.  “Although, do you think _Minjun_ can swing by the store?”

He wrinkles his nose.  The name has gotten so fucking old, but he can hardly change it now—it's on all his fake forms of identification.  He twists around on the couch to face Chan, resting his chin on the back of it.  “ _Minjun_ can probably squeeze it into his busy schedule.”

“Speaking of schedule,” Chan says, gesturing toward the calendar they’ve got hanging on the fridge.  “Your land payment’s due next week.  Don’t forget.  You don’t want your landlord snooping around out there looking for you and finding god knows what kind of toxic waste instead.”

He lets himself flop down on the sofa with a huff.  “I’ll stop by tomorrow.  Or the next day, maybe.  Tired.”  His reinforced lab is about a half hour away from the house, out in the middle of nowhere—even Chan doesn’t know where.  It’s safer for everyone involved.

Chan walks by then, laughing again, pausing to pat Soonyoung’s head.  “Well, you’ve had a busy week.”

 

Minjun goes shopping that evening, because Soonyoung told Chan he would.  Going out is an interesting experience for Soonyoung, because there’s always this idea in his head—the idea that any one of the people he sees could have been directly affected by him before, and neither would know.  Maybe the construction to fix something he destroyed made them late getting home, or the smoke from one of his explosions made their eyes water.  Maybe he blew up their place of employment.  There's a word in another language for realizing that other people have their own lives and thoughts and feelings, he's pretty sure, but is there one for realizing you’ve probably had these random near miss interactions with people before and you're none the wiser?  Soonyoung doesn't know, and it's making his head fuzzy to think about it.  

He sighs.  He gets so _introspective_ right after a job.  He'd ask if it's a common phenomenon, but he doesn’t know anyone else who blows things up for a living.

The store is fairly empty, and quiet—Soonyoung’s getting sick of the quiet, now, and his ears start to buzz and ring as he meanders through the aisles.  He pauses, reaching in the pocket of his hoodie for his hearing aids, and pops them in.  Better, he thinks.  Less quiet, at least, everything a little sharper, a little clearer, though Soonyoung still makes his way through the store in a bit of a tired haze.  It’s not until he’s waiting in line that that haze clears, dispersing as he looks at a guy one checkout lane over and realizes it’s the same face from the bottom of the news article from this morning:  flesh and blood instead of pixels, dark circles under his eyes instead of plastered on phony smile.  Soonyoung’s eyes narrow, and his fingers tap restlessly on the side of his shopping basket.

First step, find your target.

If Wen Junhui wants a sociopath, well.  Soonyoung can give him one.

Once he’s home and back in the darkness of his room, it takes him a minute of struggling with his stupid phone browser and then about a second of googling to find out Wen Junhui is twenty-six (from his facebook,) an up and coming journalist who broke some story about a wealthy couple running a criminal organization (from his profile on the newspaper website,) and a ‘certified foodie’ (from his twitter.)  That last one makes Soonyoung roll his eyes emphatically, and only reassures him that this douchebag deserves to have his shit blown to kingdom come.  Finding his address is a breeze, too, and it’s only just after nine; if he wasn’t falling asleep he’d probably go right now, do a preliminary drive by of the place, see if he can pinpoint a nice secluded spot to set up and scope things out for a couple days—but his eyes keep closing without his permission and he’s almost dropped his phone on his face twice now.  Tomorrow, then.  He smiles a little as he sets his phone aside and snuggles into his bed, already excited to get cracking on a new job.  Chan will be annoyed, probably, that he’s not taking more time to rest, but Chan thinks he works too much no matter what.  

That’s hilarious, Soonyoung thinks.  That’s what housewives say to their businessman husbands.  He bets this is the only situation where the businessman is a criminal, and the housewife is his adopted brother, but not legally, and the work is building bombs and blowing up expensive buildings.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not.  The world is bigger than just this city, after all, and _much_ bigger than just Soonyoung.

 

— — — — —

 

Before he sets out the next morning, he gets online and studies a map of the area.  Wen Junhui has a long driveway lined with trees, leading back to his house, which sits in front of a small forest.  The other side of the street has no trees, but there are two other houses.  That shouldn’t be a problem—the woods behind Wen Junhui’s house look to be accessible from a backroad on the opposite side, and will be good to observe from, away from any curious neighbors’ eyes.  Normally, he’d watch from the roadside for a while to gauge the traffic in the area, but the map shows the road dead-ending another mile or two past Wen Junhui’s driveway, so he thinks he’ll be alright to skip it.  Plus, the teeny tiny devices he uses to give himself flat tires (and therefore, a reason to sit on the side of the road for hours at a time in cases like this) are quick to make, but so finicky to get right, and he doesn’t feel like dealing with it.  The woods will do just fine.

As he’s leaving, Soonyoung passes the bathroom, where Chan’s up early getting ready for class, fussing with his hair in the mirror.  “Hey,” he hears, and turns to see Chan’s head poking out of the doorway.  He eyes Soonyoung with vague suspicion and mild surprise.  “Thought you were gonna rest?”

“I, uh...am.” Soonyoung lies half-heartedly.

“Then why do you have your black ops gear on?”

Soonyoung rolls his eyes and cracks a fond grin at the idea of black jeans, a black t-shirt, a black jacket, and a run of the mill facemask covering the bottom half of his face being black ops-worthy.  “Have a good day, Channie, work hard!” he says brightly instead of answering, wiggling the fingers of one hand at him.

“Cover up that stupid red hair,” calls Chan, disappearing back into the bathroom.

Soonyoung can’t stop drumming his fingers against the steering wheel on the drive over—it's been awhile since he's done anything residential, so he feels rusty, anxious.  At least the road he’s on is barren, with no houses in sight, and therefore (hopefully) no one to spot him sneaking into the woods.  He finds a spot where the shoulder drops off gradually to a grassy, treeless area, and parks there.  Maybe a bit conspicuous, but—it’s definitely not the _most_ conspicuous he’s ever been.  He pulls on his beanie so Chan can’t yell at him, until only the tips of his hair poke out underneath.  The woods are dense even though the trees are bare (and the leaves blanketing the ground are crunchy, which, for once, he’s not happy about.)  It takes him about fifteen minutes to sneak through the trees, checking the map on his phone periodically to see where he is, and eventually he can see the pristine backyard of Wen Junhui’s house.

It's a _very_ nice house.  Soonyoung wonders how someone so young can afford a place like this, and for that matter, what the fuck does he need all that square footage for?  He and Chan live in a nice house too, but Soonyoung’s a bit of a financial outlier in his age bracket, what with the millions of dollars he’s got buried in the backyard.  And still, their place is just nice, not _huge_ , nothing fancy.  Wen Junhui’s house is _fancy._  He must be doing very well for himself.

For a little while longer, at least.

Soonyoung checks the time on his watch—7:42.  The hours listed for Wen Junhui on the Chronicle’s website are 8am to 5pm, and according to google maps, it’s a nine minute drive from here to his office, so he should be leaving any minute.  Soonyoung moves quietly through the trees until he can see the front of the house, and the driveway, then pulls out his binoculars.  He’s far enough back from the treeline and hidden well enough by the thickness of the trees that he should be alright to— “ _Shit._ ”  His phone vibrates, and he jumps, nearly drops his binoculars.  It’s from Chan, and it’s just two words:  

_ >   Hearing aids _

  
Soonyoung sighs, because Chan’s right; he definitely doesn’t want anything or anyone sneaking up on him.  He just hates wearing the stupid things.  His hearing’s not even _that_ bad, it’s just that—well, it could definitely be better, had he not been an idiot and gone around blowing things up without taking the proper precautions when he was first starting out.  In any case, Soonyoung puts in his hearing aids so Chan’s disembodied voice doesn’t appear to say _I told you so_ when he gets spooked by a squirrel, or something.  When he does, he jumps again as a car engine flares to life—his head snaps up to see Junhui’s _convertible_ pulling out of his driveway.  Who drives a convertible in October?  Soonyoung doesn’t care that the top is up.  Convertibles are inherently douchey.

“I can't wait to blow your shit up,” Soonyoung sing-songs as he checks the time again and scrambles to pull his notebook out of his backpack so he can write it down.  
  

  * __7:44am - J leaves for work  
__  



Now his task becomes waiting, observing.  Waiting to see if Wen Junhui comes home for lunch, if he gets visitors, if he’s got someone coming to clean his house or do his lawn, what time his mail gets delivered, what kind of security system he’s got in place.  Any sign of human activity around Wen Junhui’s home, anything that’s relevant to, you know, blowing up someone’s house, Soonyoung writes down—but there doesn’t turn out to be much.    


  * __One camera above front door—none around back of house.  IDIOT__



  
It’s a big house, but only one story, which is exciting, as it makes things less complex.  Soonyoung can have some fun with this one, since it’s isolated, not in the middle of things, relatively small compared to his usual marks, but—he also does _not_ want to start a forest fire, or something, so he estimates the measurements from the house to the treeline so he can build his explosives accordingly.  
 

  * __9:00am - sprinklers go off (who has_ _sprinklers_ _)  
  
__



Between observations, he researches.  He reads up on Wen Junhui’s recent accomplishments—that story he broke appears to have been a bigger deal than Soonyoung thought.  According to his _personal fucking Wikipedia page_ , he spent the better part of a year uncovering it with the help of some young hotshot detective, and once the article came out they both got fat promotions.  Soonyoung remembers the story, too—high society couple gets busted for money laundering, corruption, illegal business dealings...that kind of thing just doesn’t do much for him, though, considering he gets his criminal kicks in other ways, so he hadn’t paid much attention to it.  Still, it had skyrocketed Junhui up the ranks and now his name usually ends up somewhere on the front page, now he has this enormous unnecessary house, now he has a stupid ostentatious car that makes Soonyoung want to punch him, and/or blow up his worldly possessions.    


  * __10:57am - mail (J doesn’t deserve such a hot mailman…)  
  
__



He bets that sexy crime couple wants to punch Wen Junhui too.  Actually, he’s fairly surprised Wen Junhui hasn’t been wiped off the face of the earth, considering the couple’s breakings of the law were various and many—until he reads another article saying they’d both died while waiting to be transferred to the max security prison where they were to serve their sentences.  Soonyoung rolls his eyes.  ‘Died’—that’s highly suspicious.  It sounds an awful lot like yet another case of the police in this city being a complete joke.  


  * __12:32pm - called Chronicle offices on burner #8.  J @ lunch 12-1.  *Did not come home__



  
Another hysterical tidbit Soonyoung finds while puttering around the Chronicle’s website—their offices were going to be moved to the Ahn building.  Oops.  No wonder Wen Junhui had gotten so fired up over that.  


  * __Spotted motion sensors in backyard—googled the brand—only a 15 foot range!!!  Why are they only in the backyard!!!!!!!!  J is asking for it!!!!!!  
  
__



He takes a deep breath, gazing up through the tree branches.  Absently, Soonyoung wonders if Hoshi has a Wikipedia page, and checks.  He doesn’t, but he does find that there are several instagram and twitter accounts run by teenagers dedicated to updating his _fans_ about his latest exploits.  One has almost twenty thousand followers.  He’d be lying if he said it didn’t feed his ego immensely.  


  * __Detonation right before 9am =  the sprinklers will help neutralize the dust/keep flames from spreading…….  
  
__



A little after five, Wen Junhui’s car cruises back up his driveway.  Soonyoung watches him shut his car door, input his security code, and disappear into his house.  He gets that feeling again, where he ruminates on how what he does affects people’s lives—someone built Wen Junhui’s house, Wen Junhui probably has hundreds of meaningful objects in his house, and oh god, what if he has a cat?  Or an innocent fishie?  Soonyoung is so not ready to have the blood of tiny sweet animals on his hands, no sir.  He worries his lip for a few seconds...then shrugs to himself.  Wen Junhui should have thought of that, honestly, before sticking his nose into Soonyoung’s business.

He guesses he’ll look into the hypothetical kitty, though.  Just to be sure.

He heads back to his car, which is right where he left it (and even if it hadn’t been, he’s not fussed, since he’s rich, and has three more cars in a storage unit a couple towns over.)  When he gets in, he closes his eyes and leans back, exhaling a deep breath.  “Radio gods, don’t fail me,” he says, and switches it on to the welcome, soul-nourishing sounds of Carly Rae Jepsen.

“Oh _fuck_ yes, blessed job,” he sighs happily, shifting his car into gear and taking off toward home.

 

— — — — —

 

Really, ‘explosion’ is the wrong word for what Soonyoung does.  Explosions are associated with mushroom clouds and flames shooting everywhere, but that’s not the deal.  The first bomb he built—yeah.  That one had _exploded_ .  But he didn’t really know what he was doing back then, and he had done it on a whim, and frankly speaking he had _still_ expected it to look much cooler.  So he learned.  What he _actually_ does is called ‘building implosion,’ although technically, even implosion isn’t right.  For the multi-story buildings, like the Ahn building, he has to strategically place several explosives inside, which get set off first to get the supports out of the way, then more on the bottom floor to jumpstart the collapse.  Sure, he can rig flames to shoot out the windows, but if he doesn’t there’s barely even any visual cue that it’s happening before the building starts to come down.  Which is why Soonyoung plants fireworks at his jobs.  They’re much easier, and he just likes having something pretty to look at.

No fireworks at this one, though, since it will be taking place during the day.  For Wen Junhui, Soonyoung rigs a couple of simple explosives, TNT based, but he still holes up in his lab for a few days perfecting them.  It’s important for these to have a small blast radius, but still be powerful enough to take the house down.  If he can plant them near some integral supports he should be fine, the house should just collapse and whatever doesn’t go down at first the fire should take pretty quickly.  

“I almost never get to _burn things_ ,” he says to Nayoung when she drops off his delivery, rubbing his hands together.  “This is special.”

She giggles at his excitement, carefully sitting down the box she’s carrying.  “Of all the criminals I supply to, you are by far the cutest.”

“I’d better be.”

 

Soonyoung expects the nerves when he wakes up on d-day.  Just because he’s done this more times than he can count (just an expression—he remembers every single job) doesn’t mean he’s immune to the thrill and the danger of it.  Why else would he do it?  So he expects his hands to tremble when he turns the key in his car’s ignition, his breath to go shaky as he pulls over in the same spot on the side of the road by the woods, the swoop in his stomach as he enters them.  He expects his heart rate to ramp up and his teeth to chatter from the adrenaline as Wen Junhui’s house comes into view.

What he doesn’t expect is to see someone else in the woods ahead of him.

He stops dead and hides behind a tree, waiting until this other person is slightly further ahead before he follows, gingerly.  When he can’t hear the rustle of additional footsteps in the leaves, Soonyoung sneaks along quietly until he's close enough again to make sure, and—yeah.  The Other Person is now creeping through Wen Junhui’s backyard.  Soonyoung fumbles for his binoculars and watches the figure—it’s a boy, tall and thin, dressed head to toe in black—fuck.  Fuck.  Headed right for Wen Junhui’s motion sensors.  That won’t do.

Slowly making his way to the edge of the forest and toward the yard, Soonyoung’s fingers brush against the dart gun at his side—but there’s not enough time.  Other Guy is too close to setting off whatever alert system Wen Junhui has connected to those god damn motion sensors.  “Hey,” he hisses, then again, louder, pulling down the mask covering the lower half of his face and hurriedly affixing it back in place.  The Other Guy spins around.  He’s holding a gun out in front of him, aimed directly at Soonyoung.  “Fuck, jesus, okay,” Soonyoung says, raising his hands up by his head.  This is so not cool.  He’s trying to _help_ .  “Don't shoot me, holy shit, it’s just—there’s no camera back here, but there _is_ a motion detector.”  He nods in the direction of the house.

Other Guy glances back too, for just a second, then turns back to Soonyoung, cocking his head to one side and taking a step toward him.  “Who do you work for?” he asks.

“Who do I _work for?_ No one.”  Other Guy scoffs, stepping even closer, until Soonyoung’s staring straight down the barrel of his pistol.  “Okay, _seriously_ , no one sent me, or something, I’m here to—I mean, same as you, I imagine, by the looks of things, only I’ve been working on this for a week.  It’s mine.”

The guy keeps glaring at him for a few seconds, until one hand drops from the gun to his hip, and Soonyoung breathes easier:  the change in posture probably ( _probably_ ) means he’s not going to shoot him, although the hand holding the gun is still remarkably steady.  Up close, this guy is—well, sexy, and Soonyoung would assume he’s new at this, since he doesn’t have a mask on, if not for the insanely professional looking bodysuit he’s wearing, and the belt with a ton of complex looking gadgets hanging off of it.  Is professional the right word, though?  Soonyoung’s not sure.  It looks a hell of a lot more serious than his own jeans and shirt and jacket, but also—a bodysuit, really?  What movie does he think he’s in?

He’s staring.  He realizes it when he looks back up at Other Sexy Guy’s face, and he’s smirking.  “Yours," Other Sexy Guy repeats, raising one eyebrow skeptically.

“Yeah?” Soonyoung says.  “Like, you know, criminal to criminal, it’s not really cool to just steal someone’s job out from under them.”

“How the hell was I supposed to know this is _your job_?”  His voice is deep, Soonyoung can tell even though they’re currently communicating in hurried half-whispers.

Soonyoung puts his hands down tentatively, slowly, careful not to spook Sexy.  “Well, you wouldn’t have, I guess.”  He grins.  “Small world though, yeah?  He write an article about you too?”

Sexy gives a sarcastic, disbelieving snort of laughter.  “I don’t see how that’s your business?  Some of us don't—” he cuts himself off, and Soonyoung fidgets nervously.  It’s frustrating to watch this guy just _stand_ there, because Soonyoung is pretty sure there’s no way he can get his bombs inside before the sprinklers go off now—but he also can’t stop staring.  Sexy’s mouth opens in curiosity, tongue poking out just a little, eyes fixed on Soonyoung.  “You’re Hoshi,” he says, crossing his arms.  His expression turns accusatory.  “ _You_ fucked up my last job.”

Oh?   _That’s_ interesting.  Soonyoung grins wide, eyebrows bouncing once.  “You _know_ me,” he says, and Sexy rolls his eyes.  “What job?”

“The Ahn building.  If you hadn’t gotten in our way, I wouldn’t even be here right now.”

“Yeah, well, our friend here only started talking absolute shit about me in the papers after that one, so neither would I.”  Sexy’s eyebrows raise, just barely.  The mask on Soonyoung’s face is starting to feel stiflingly hot.  “And that would be no good, because this guy just fucking deserves to get his shit exploded, dude.  You can tell by—his whole existence.”

The sun peeks out from between clouds and Soonyoung glances at his watch.  He’s definitely missing the sprinklers.  Sexy, on the other hand, looks thoughtful, almost— _almost_ amused.  “Yes, he does.  But you’ve already screwed things up once, so—get out of here.”  He turns away, but immediately turns back when Soonyoung doesn’t move.  “Seriously, don’t you have a selfie to take, or something?”

Soonyoung narrows his eyes.  “Only if you ask nicely, honey,” he says, puckering his lips.  “Also, word of advice?  Invest in a mask.  You’ve got a face that’s gonna be _very_ hard to forget.”  He bats his eyelashes, but Sexy’s nostrils flare, eyes widening just a touch, and his hands fly up to his face.  He feels around for a second and his eyes close as he sighs and shakes his head in exasperation.  Soonyoung clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth.  “Rookie mistake.”

Sexy’s cheeks go just the tiniest bit pink.  “Fuck off,” he grumbles, and Soonyoung laughs.

“What are you doing, anyway?  Couldn’t we, I don’t know, coordinate?”

“Again, none of your business, and we could not.   _Fuck off_.”

The sprinklers go off.  Sexy jumps, and Soonyoung would laugh, but this job is apparently truly not happening, and it’s incredibly annoying.  He watches Sexy roll his eyes again, then turn and start back towards the house, and it makes anger bubble up inside him.  “Hey!”

“Goodbye, _Hoshi_ ,” Sexy calls over his shoulder, sneer obvious in his voice.

Ugh.  This is _not_ how this was supposed to go.  “ _Hey_ ,” he repeats, practically growling, jogging to catch up, careful to stay out of range of the motion sensors.  “What’s to stop me from coming back and leaving my bombs here anyway?”

Sexy stops, and considers for just a millisecond, barely long enough for Soonyoung to register it.  “That would be a bad idea.”

Soonyoung scowls.  “Because it would ruin your _plan?_ ”

Clouds cover the sun again, casting everything in grey.  Sexy presses his lips together like he’s contemplating what to say, then he looks Soonyoung in the eye, serious and intense.  “Because this place is gonna be crawling with cops very soon.”  His face goes back to bored in an instant.  “Bye.”

Convenient.  Although, if true, definitely a good enough reason to leave, so Soonyoung huffs in annoyance and stomps away; confused, with an extreme case of explosive blue balls.

How disappointing.

 

— — — — —

 

“I hate my life,” Soonyoung whines over the TV once Chan’s come home from work and been filled in on the audacity of the sexy stranger.  “I can’t believe this.  Since when is Carly Rae a _bad_ omen?”

Chan frowns at him.  “You’ve had to abandon jobs before, Soonyoung, it’s not the end of the world.”

It’s true, he has, but this is _different_.  “You don’t understand, Channie.  I’ve never had a job _stolen_ from me.”  Chan has mostly turned his attention back to the TV, but Soonyoung keeps going anyway.  “And he was so rude!  Acting like he knew better than me when he didn’t even have a mask on.”  He crosses his arms.  “Total bullshit.”

“Soonyoung,” Chan says suddenly, straightening up a little.

“And he was so _fucking_ sanctimonious—”

“ _Soonyoung_.”  He gestures to the TV.  “Is this your journalist?”

Soonyoung scrunches his eyebrows together, head whipping toward the television—which currently displays Wen Junhui, being carted out of his house in handcuffs.  Soonyoung’s mouth drops open.  The screen switches to an interview with his editor at the Chronicle, talking about how they don’t allow blackmail or fabrication of stories at their paper and how this has taken their whole staff by surprise.  “Huh,” Soonyoung says.  Based on their interactions, he honestly didn’t think his arch-nemesis had it in him.  (Soonyoung’s decided that the sexy guy from Wen Junhui’s house is now his arch-nemesis.  He’s never had one before and it makes him feel terribly legitimate.)

_“Arch-nemesis?”_ Chan sputters when Soonyoung voices his surprise.  “No, Soonyoung.  That’s so dumb, first of all.  Second of all, he saved your ass.  Didn’t you say he told you not to leave your bomb?  That it would be a bad idea?”

“He just didn’t want me to fuck up his weird vendetta against this guy.”

“Right.  Weird vendetta.  Something you’d know nothing about, having been called a sociopath once and deciding to blow up this guy’s whole life,” Chan responds, tone heavy with sarcasm.

Soonyoung laughs, shoving him away gently.  “Not even!  Just his house.”  Soonyoung points to the TV.  “ _This_ is what it looks like to get your whole life blown up.”  He leans back, contemplating the screen.  “This is impressive.”

Chan’s quiet for a second, then sighs dramatically.  “Fifty bucks says you fuck your arch-nemesis.  Just text me when it happens and I’ll go out back and dig it up myself.”

First of all, how dare he.  “What?!  Shut up,” Soonyoung says as Chan cackles.  “And anyway,” he continues, deadpanning, “that would entail actually getting laid, is the thing.   _You’re_ the only one who’s had a gentleman caller in the past six months.”  He pauses, mind starting to wander, then stops himself, refusing to think about fucking his sexy arch-nemesis.

“Whatever you say,” Chan sing-songs.

“Hm,” Soonyoung responds, falling into silence.  He’s not sure how he feels.  At least Wen Junhui went down, but this feels awfully extreme.  (Blowing up someone’s house is also extreme, he’s well aware, whatever.)  Whatever Wen Junhui did to Arch-Nemesis...Soonyoung has no idea, but he thinks he really wants to find out.  He could probably use it against him.  Or at the very least, use it to annoy him.  That’s what arch-nemeses do, right?  They definitely don’t fuck, Soonyoung is sure of it.  They don’t even _think_ about fucking, not even for a second.

Soonyoung goes to bed a very short time later, and does not think about fucking his arch-nemesis.

 

— — — — —

 

He decides to give himself some time before hopping back in the proverbial saddle—failure is horrifically discouraging, and although it was _not_ his fault, he still can’t help but feel like he failed.  He’s also failed at finding any information whatsoever about his arch-nemesis, which is sorely disappointing.  Even reading an entire year back in Wen Junhui’s articles doesn’t help.  Chan keeps telling him he's getting obsessed because his arch-nemesis is hot, but that's just not true—can't a guy want to find out absolutely everything he can about another guy anymore without it being a _thing?_

“If it doesn't matter that he’s hot,” Chan asks over lunch one day, “why was that immediately the way you chose to describe him to me?”

Soonyoung sighs.  Hard.  They've been over this.  “Because I was—weaving you a tapestry.  With words.  That's how you tell a _story_ , Chan.”  He takes a sip of his iced coffee.  “If I didn't tell you about his chocolatey brown hair and his mysterious dark eyes and his lean yet powerful body, you would have had completely the wrong guy in your head.”  He lets out a shaky breath when he's finished.  Now Chan has gotten him all worked up.  _And_ he's snickering away across the table, like an asshole.  Infuriating.  “Stop laughing!  He’s hot, but he’s a total fucking asshole!  What is so hard to understand about this!”

“There’s no way for you to know how powerful his body is, S—Minjun.”  He mouths ‘sorry’ after he corrects himself.  Soonyoung feigns offense.

“Tighten up, dude, you haven’t Sminjun’d me in forever.”

Chan gives him the finger and glowers at him.  “The point is, you haven't gotten laid in months.  You’re pouring all your pent up sexual energy onto this random—”  The waitress walks by, and Chan clears his throat.  “—Normal person,” he finishes.  When he speaks again his voice is quieter, but he doesn’t sound like any less of a know-it-all.  “And even if it’s not because he’s hot, you’re still obsessed.”

Soonyoung scowls.  ‘Obsessed’ is not at all a fair word to use here.  “Whatever, _Mom_.”

“ _Whatever_ , Sminjun.”  He picks up his sandwich again, but sits it back on his plate, making a small noise of surprise.  “I just remembered!  I know you’re wallowing in self-pity currently, but I saw something you might like,” Chan says.  He digs in his backpack for a moment before holding a piece of paper out to Soonyoung.  “It’s not your usual thing, but, well…”  Soonyoung takes it.  It’s a flyer for a fundraiser—a police fundraiser.  It’s very fancy, thrown by some rich people he doesn’t care about, and best of all, most of the police department will be in attendance.  God, these are just the kinds of people Soonyoung loves pissing off.

He sighs dreamily.  Truly, he loves Chan with all his heart.  “Oh, _Channie_ ,” he starts earnestly.  “You know me so well.”

Chan laughs, loud, as if he wouldn’t care if the whole cafe knew exactly what they were talking about.  “I do, but our priorities _do_ happen to be aligned on this one.”  The way he says it—it’s not angry, he doesn’t mean anything by it, but Soonyoung’s smile fades and he looks down at his lap all the same.  It’s probably him Chan should be hating, not the police, and the reminder stings.

“Hey.  Stop.”

It takes him a second to snap out of his guilt-trip.  When he looks up, Chan’s serious, but still not angry, and he shakes his head at Soonyoung.  “ _Stop._ ”  Soonyoung nods, forcing a smile, and Chan smiles back.  “Good.”  He leans forward across the table, looks to his left and then his right.  “You should take the money,” he whispers, and Soonyoung laughs.

“You’re turning into a regular mastermind, Channie,” he says, not without a twinge of genuine pride, because this—this is a fantastic idea.  This will be fun.

 

— — — — —

 

The key to announcing the presence of a bomb is figuring out your demographic, so you know what reaction to expect.  For example, generally, both extremes of the age spectrum typically start yelling in indignation and stampeding toward the nearest exit they can find, to get themselves out.  Women usually focus more on getting themselves _and_ those around them out, men go completely Lord of the Flies, and so on.  The thing about this event is that the demographic is a ballroom full of people who are specifically trained to handle situations like this, and are also itching to arrest Hoshi.  Clearly, that would not be Soonyoung’s preferred outcome.

Luckily, there’s also the fact that Soonyoung knows that this particular police department is awful, and negligent, and probably corrupt as fuck, so he’s hoping maybe they’re less competent than he’s expecting.

“That’s never going to work,” says Chan, when Soonyoung talks him through his plan.

But it does.

In fact, it had gone so smoothly Soonyoung can scarcely believe it.  He’d taken the money, planted his bomb in its place _and_ left a note (politely asking whoever found it to let everyone know when the bomb would be detonating and warning them not to try to defuse, because it was rigged to go off if tampered with) and he’d only run into _one_ person who questioned his shitty fake waiter outfit, who he promptly shot with one of his darts.  He’s not sure whether he’s insanely lucky, or if everyone there was just really that stupid, but either way, things go off without a hitch and Soonyoung is on top of the world, especially after the embarrassing debacle at Wen Junhui’s house.

“It’s going to take a whole _year_ to rebuild the convention center, Channie, imagine that.”  He smiles at the newspaper in his hands, shimmying his shoulders a little in excitement and pride.  He should really target the city's elite more often.

The paper doesn’t get Chan’s attention, though, even when Soonyoung holds it up for him to see—he’s still counting the money from last night.  “Congratulations,” he says absently, then pouts, shoulders slumping.  “I wish we could cash the checks.”

“You know we’re millionaires, right?” Soonyoung says, putting down the newspaper on the table.  “Like, we’re actual millionaires.  The point wasn’t to get more money.  The point was them _not_ getting it.”

Chan grins reluctantly.  “I know, I know.  It’s just...the checks are so _much_.”

Rolling his eyes, Soonyoung goes back to his article.  He scans the photo of the guests, pre-evacuation and hysteria, as well as the hosts.  They look even more stuck up in pictures than they did in real life.  Granted, Soonyoung had only gotten a glimpse of them, but—seriously.  They're all very fancy, though, very posh and pretty—very forgettable, if he's honest, except—

Except.

He squints, bringing the paper right up to his face.  He knows someone in this picture.

“Oh,” Soonyoung says weakly.  Chan is unbothered by Soonyoung’s mild mental breakdown—which is what this is, because it’s his Arch Fucking Sexy Nemesis in the picture, looking dapper, and gorgeous, arm linked with an equally beautiful woman to his right.  Soonyoung stares.  _What?_   What’s a guy who was just breaking into someone’s house doing at a fundraising event?  What's an apparently rich philanthropist doing breaking into someone’s house?  Soonyoung reads over the caption quickly, heart starting to pound.  He has a name.  Jeon Wonwoo.

“Chan,” he says, as calmly as he can.  “I need you to look at this image and tell me if you know who this is.”  Chan looks up, slowly.  “Right now.”

Soonyoung points to Jeon Wonwoo in the picture, and Chan tilts his head.  “Uh,” he says, squinting.  “Oh—yes.  Remember that rich couple that got arrested maybe...a year or two ago?  That’s their son.”  He taps the girl arm-in-arm with Wonwoo.  “That’s the daughter.”

Several things start to click into place, and Soonyoung stands up.  “This is him.  This is my arch-nemesis.”  Chan’s eyes go wide, eyebrows shooting up.  “Wen Junhui wrote the article exposing his parents.”

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Chan says, laughing in disbelief.  “Well...I guess that makes sense.”

It really does.  Soonyoung’s started to pace, now, mind whirring in thirty different directions.  “I need a cigarette.”

“Nope, you’re too flammable, you’ve probably got flash powder or something under your nails, you’ll blow yourself up.”  Soonyoung gives Chan a withering look, not even knowing where to begin correcting him as he eyes Soonyoung curiously.  “What are you freaking out for, anyway?  This is an enormous overreaction.  You _wanted_ to know who he was.”

He had, but now that he does he feels like his nerves are all lit fuses.  He swallows.  “I need a joint.”

“...Flammable.”

Soonyoung groans, finally stopping and running a hand through his hair.  He sinks back down into his chair and looks helplessly at Chan.  “I need a drink?”

“It’s nine in the morning, big brother.”  Chan stands to leave, clapping Soonyoung on the back before he goes.  “What you need is dick.”

The nerve.  The absolute audacity.  Soonyoung glares for a second at Chan’s back as he heads toward his bedroom, then slumps forward onto the table, because, well.  It’s not like he’s wrong.   _However_ , his sexual frustration is a _completely separate issue_ from the sudden revelation of Jeon Wonwoo.  Soonyoung sighs, and sits up, shaking his head quickly and resolutely.  He’s not going to get weird about this.  He’s not.  Other criminals exist in the world, and plenty of them are probably hot, and aloof, and look amazing in skintight black bodysuits, and can get their enemies arrested with ease.  There’s no reason to get hung up on this one.  So he’s not going to.

 

Except for the fact that he totally is.  He resists for about an hour before he’s shut himself in his room and settled in to learn everything he can about Jeon Wonwoo and his criminal upbringing.  His parents were a huge deal in the city before they were exposed—very rich and powerful and just super badass—then they got arrested, and sentenced, and died.  No matter where he looks he can’t find a cause of death that makes sense; it appears to have been ruled a double suicide, but the whole thing is fishy, and Soonyoung doesn’t buy it.

He delves more into their actual operation, learning that the charity they ran had been a money laundering front—it was legitimate, at least in the eyes of the public, and they held banquets and benefits regularly, which made it easy for them to hide their _illegitimate_ money in the donations.  The money itself came from underground arms trade, of which the wife was the boss.  Soonyoung sighs to himself, rubbing his eyes.  Gunrunning—that’s intense, and super fucking cool.  He wonders if Wonwoo and his sister are carrying on that aspect of the family business.  It sounds dangerous, which piques Soonyoung’s curiosity.  

And of course, this isn’t even mentioning the enormous list of confirmed and theorized dirty deals they had going all over the city:  bribery, blackmail, extortion—Soonyoung really wonders how they managed to get caught, because they seemed to have countless people working for or with them who should have been able to protect them from something like this.

After close to two hours, Soonyoung’s eyes are stinging.  Clearly, Jeon Wonwoo took Wen Junhui down (possibly with the help of his sister) because he busted their parents.  But is that all?  Is he stopping there?  Soonyoung feels like someone their parents thought was on their side must have betrayed them, for them to go down so hard.  He reclines in his chair for a second, leans his head back and stares blankly up at the ceiling.  He’s pretty sure he couldn’t think of anything sexier than two sexy siblings out doing crime and getting sexy revenge if he tried, and it’s just unfair.

“God fucking damn it,” he says to himself, because this is all Chan’s fault, he wouldn’t even be thinking this way if Chan hadn’t brought up fucking him that first night.  Absolutely not.

The sister, Seulgi, definitely appears to be the more public sibling.  Everything Soonyoung can find shows her front and center, with Wonwoo at her side:  in fact, the most he’s been able to dig up on Wonwoo is some profile from a year ago on a list of ‘Eligible Bachelors.’  It was Seulgi that spoke at the press conference held when their parents were taken into custody—it’s this incredibly moving spiel about how she and her brother are shocked at their parents’ betrayal of the good people of this city, and how although they wish they could believe the best in them, it’s clear that their greed and self interest corrupted them; when she breaks into small, delicate sobs it’s so convincing Soonyoung actually laughs out loud.  Very, very impressive.  She also seems to be the one in the spotlight now, giving interviews about their ‘charity work,’ which Soonyoung can’t believe the entire world isn’t suspicious of.  Also suspicious is the police fundraiser—all those cops in one place, _plus_ the Crime Siblings?  More than likely they had something planned that Soonyoung ruined.  Oops.

Eventually Soonyoung has passed four hours this way, and his mind hasn’t stopped _going_ since this morning.  He reaches up and takes out his hearing aids, just to dull things a little, and hopefully help him relax.  He closes his eyes, but he can’t shut his brain off—he wonders if Wen Junhui was the first person on their list, or if they’ve been doing this for awhile?  Who will be next?  What’s Jeon Wonwoo wearing right now?  At this moment, these are all equally pressing questions to Soonyoung, and he intends to find out the answers.

“Soonyoung.”

He whips around to see Chan’s head poking through his doorway.

“Sorry!  I knocked.  Just wanted to let you know I’m gonna be at Hansol’s tonight.”  He squints warily at Soonyoung, the several different browser windows open on his computer, and then the notebook full of scribbles next to him.  “Don’t, uh...obsess weirdly over anything while I’m gone...”

Silently, Soonyoung forces a cheery smile and acknowledges the possibility that ‘obsessed’ is _maybe_ a fair assessment of his current situation.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Two weeks go by, and Soonyoung wouldn’t say he’s spiralled, necessarily, and certainly not out of control—but also, here he is, having donated a hefty sum of money to a new art gallery opening up, making sure he looks his absolute best because it just so happens that Jeon Wonwoo will be at the private donors’ gala he now gets to attend.  To Soonyoung’s credit, the entire situation surrounding Jeon Wonwoo and his family is compelling, and would be interesting enough on its own, especially considering Soonyoung has information the general public doesn’t have.  Also to his credit, he’s kept the fact that Jeon Wonwoo is going to be there a complete secret, and while Chan is definitely suspicious, Soonyoung has managed to keep him satisfied with the explanation that he’s going to the gala to scope out a future job.

In fact, he _still_ hasn’t cracked, even though Chan has been giving him pointed looks all evening as he’s gotten ready.  He can tell Soonyoung’s getting dressed up _for_ something and not just because it’s a black tie event—because he’s terrible, because he knows Soonyoung much too well.  But still, Soonyoung’s holding it in, because honestly?  He does feel like setting some art ablaze is right up his alley, and screw Lee Chan, he has no idea what he’s talking about.

Hansol shows up as Chan is hemming Soonyoung’s dress pants in the kitchen, whistling at Soonyoung as soon as he walks through the door.  “Hot diggity.  Where are you going looking so fancy?”

“Some art gallery thing,” Chan calls from the floor, before Soonyoung can answer.  “You know anything about it?”

Right.  Hansol’s an art student.  Shit.  His eyebrows raise.  “I do.”

Soonyoung cuts in as fast as he can.  “Tell me, Hansol.  What is the point of having a pre-opening thing before the actual ribbon cutting?  It just seems like an excuse to let all the rich people see the art first.”

“Are you going to blow up an art gallery?” Hansol asks, ignoring Soonyoung’s attempted distraction completely.  Soonyoung makes a face and nods reluctantly as Hansol hops onto their kitchen counter, swinging his legs lightly once he’s comfortable.  “I feel like I have to voice my disagreement on this one.”

Even though Hansol’s tone suggests he knows he won’t change Soonyoung’s mind, Soonyoung feels the need to defend himself.  “I wouldn’t do it if _your_ art was in it.”  There’s a pinch at his ankle and Soonyoung looks down to see Chan glaring darkly at him, pins sticking out from between his teeth.  He gives him a simpering look in response.  “Some people say Hoshi is a performance artist, you know.  You can think of it like that, if it helps.  Something about the impermanence of life, or something. Everything is fleeting.  Time is an illusion.”  To Soonyoung’s surprise and amusement, Hansol makes a thoughtful face, nodding.

“Don’t turn my boyfriend into you, Minjun,” Chan warns, and turns back to Hansol.  “Anyway, he’s being super weird about it...I think there’s something else going on that he’s not telling me.”

Hansol thinks for a second, then— “Well, Kang Seulgi tends to show up at art things, so I guess her brother will be there too?  Or, half brother, I think, technically.  The rich guy you wanna bone?  Your nemesis, or whatever.”

Soonyoung’s mouth hangs open as Hansol starts laughing, then he glares in disbelief at Chan.  “How much do you tell this guy about my personal life?!  What if he’s a double agent?”

“I _knew_ it,” says Chan, climbing to his feet and ignoring Soonyoung’s indignance.  “I knew you were obsessing about him.  After I _expressly_ _told you not to_.”  He jabs Soonyoung in the chest for emphasis.  Soonyoung sticks his tongue out at him.

Although, yes.  He has been obsessing, a little—but he can’t help it.  It’s not his fault Jeon Wonwoo is hot and interesting.  Soonyoung holds eye contact with Chan, giving a non-apologetic shrug.  They glare at each other until Hansol interrupts.  “Hold on, do you think I’m a double agent?”  Soonyoung’s eyes flick to him, expressionless.  No, he does not, but he just shrugs again and goes back to Chan even as Hansol continues:  “I _hate_ that that makes me feel cool.”

After another few seconds Chan sighs, rolling his eyes.  “Whatever.  Don’t forget I have fifty on you fucking him.”

Soonyoung huffs.  “I don’t want to fuck him!  I don’t even like him!  It’s the complete opposite!  I'm just planning a _job_.  The presence of a rich, mysterious, devastatingly handsome man is mostly irrelevant.  He might not even like guys, for all I know.  And I— _shut up, Chan.”_ He keeps _laughing_.  It’s enough to make Soonyoung want to throttle him.

“Yeah, babe, give him a break.”  Soonyoung beams at Hansol, his new best friend, for defending him—then Hansol reaches over and pinches one of his cheeks.  “He has a crush.  It's cute.”  Hansol can rot in hell.

Chan smirks at him, one eyebrow cocked.  “Can I finish your fucking pants, or not?”

Soonyoung steps back into the middle of the floor so Chan can get back to work.  “I don’t have a crush,” he says, aiming for defiant but landing somewhere around unconvincing.  “He stole Wen Junhui from me.  I just—I just want to mess with him.  Seriously.”  Probably.

From the counter, Hansol snickers, and Soonyoung pointedly does not look at him.  “You should stop denying your feelings, Minjun.  Or _you’ll_ explode.”

So Hansol has _jokes_ now.  “Ha _ha_ ,” Soonyoung says, as cuttingly sarcastic as he can.  “I think I like you more when you're respectfully judging my unsavory lifestyle choices.”

“What can I say, I'm coming around to it.  The performance art thing actually kind of makes me like it a little.  I think I’m starting to turn evil,” Hansol says, contemplative and completely serious.  Soonyoung snorts.  It’s hysterical to imagine Hansol as _evil_.

Chan has other thoughts, apparently, grumbling “Thanks for corrupting my respectable Gryffindor boyfriend, asshole,” as he makes tiny, careful stitches on Soonyoung’s pantleg.

“ _You_ are the one who brought him into our Slytherin household, what did you expect?”

Chan’s sigh of exasperation makes Soonyoung and Hansol laugh even more, which makes Chan even more exasperated.  It’s another few minutes before he finishes hemming, and Soonyoung passes them by wondering if Jeon Wonwoo has to deal with this type of annoyance before going to an event.  Probably not.  He probably has a butler, or something.  Soonyoung lets his shoulders slump and his head tilt back toward the ceiling, squinting into the overhead light for a few seconds, then blinking as he lowers his gaze to Hansol, who’s watching Chan fondly.  He’s painfully aware of how single he is for a moment, how lonely this life he’s chosen is.

“You’re done, get out of my sight,” Chan announces, standing up and stretching.  It startles Soonyoung out of his self-pity, thankfully—the last thing he needs is to be distracted.  Hansol scoots off the counter and leans his chin on Chan’s shoulder.

“Let’s see the goods,” he says, and Soonyoung obliges, spinning around and striking a pose.  He puffs up with confidence immediately upon seeing their faces—fond, embarrassed pride, with a hint of impressed.  It’s a nice moment, here in his kitchen with his little fake family, even if it feels a bit like his parents (who are younger than him) are sending him off to prom (which he never attended.)  “Your arch-nemesis won’t know what hit him,” Hansol says, wrapping his arms around Chan’s waist.

Chan tilts his head, not taking his eyes off Soonyoung.  “A bomb, probably.”

Nice moment ruined.  “I don’t want to blow _him_ up,” Soonyoung whines.

Hansol raises one eyebrow.  “Right.  Just blow him.”

That would have been a fantastic pun, Soonyoung thinks, if it were not at his own expense.

 

— — — — —

 

It’s easy to spot Wonwoo when Soonyoung arrives, because it’s easy to spot his sister.  She’s surrounded by people clamoring to speak with her, and Wonwoo stands beside her, just outside of her perpetual glow, watching in amusement.  Soonyoung finds himself wanting to go talk to him, give him something to _do_ instead of just existing in his sister’s shadow—then he reminds himself that this is someone who stole what should have been an easy job out from under him, and he’s here tonight for a reason, and he hasn’t _quite_ decided what the reason really is yet, but it definitely is not to be _nice_ to Jeon Wonwoo.

There are a few speeches, which Soonyoung half listens to—the curator speaks at length about funding and creativity and how thankful he is for all the contributions that made this night possible—blah, blah, blah.  Soonyoung mostly watches Wonwoo the whole time.  He alternates between listening, whispering with his sister, and looking vaguely bored.  It’s only when his sister speaks that he stands up a tiny bit straighter, a bit more attentive, though Soonyoung honestly can’t imagine why.  The speeches are all different ways to say the same thing, including hers, and it’s so boring it’s practically torture.  Soonyoung would probably be flicking wadded up bits of napkin at people by now if his eyes weren’t glued to Jeon Wonwoo, who is doing something on his phone now that his sister is done speaking.  He’s wearing glasses, which look unfairly good on him—Soonyoung hates that he has to keep reminding himself that this is _not_ someone he likes, and he doesn’t need to be admiring how cute he looks in glasses.  He’s just about to tear his eyes away when Wonwoo looks up from his phone, glances casually around the room, and catches Soonyoung staring.

Soonyoung holds his breath, wanting to look away but knowing it would just make him look even worse.  So he lets a slow grin spread across his face, raising his eyebrows.  He watches the corners of Wonwoo’s mouth quirk up just a little before he looks Soonyoung up and down for a second, and when their eyes meet again Soonyoung smirks wider and turns away.

Once the speeches finally end and everyone’s free to mingle, Soonyoung hangs back for a moment, taking in the layout and structure of the room, committing it to memory.  When he's accomplished that, he searches Wonwoo out again; he’s made his way toward a wall, away from the majority of the people, apparently intent on keeping to himself.  Soonyoung can't help but think how it suits him—standing alone, drinking champagne, all tall and statuesque and looking more like art than most of the art in this room—and he thinks Wonwoo would probably be content to stand by himself all night, with no one bothering him.  Soonyoung can’t abide that, so he heads over and stands next to him in silence for a second, then clears his throat.

“Why was the painting arrested?” he asks, casually.

Wonwoo’s head turns and his eyes eyes light up in interest when he recognizes Soonyoung.  “I’m sorry?”  He squints and shakes his head in confusion, looking highly amused and a tiny bit fascinated.

“Why was the painting arrested,” he says again.  Wonwoo looks very much like Soonyoung has a secret he’s desperate to be in on, now, and Soonyoung waits until he takes another sip of his drink to continue:  “Because it was framed.”

Immediately, Wonwoo snorts his drink back into his glass, covering his mouth and trying to mask it with a cough.  He looks over at Soonyoung, laughing silently behind his hand.  When he moves it, his cheeks are pink, and he’s smiling.  Soonyoung can’t help but smile back—he hadn’t quite expected that reaction.  “Are you trying to kill me?” Wonwoo asks, jokingly, wiping at his mouth a little and looking down to inspect his shirt and jacket for stains.

Not yet, Soonyoung wants to say.  Instead, he goes with:  “That wasn’t my fault.  I can’t remember the last time someone actually _laughed_ at one of my jokes.”

“I mean, they clearly don’t understand real humor.”  Wonwoo bites his lip for a second before looking Soonyoung up and down again with a small, interested smile.  “I saw you staring at me earlier.”

This is the first time he’s heard Wonwoo speak above a whisper, and his voice does altogether ludicrous things to his insides.  The fact that he’s _flirting_ also doesn’t help.   _Get it together,_ Soonyoung tells himself sternly.  It doesn’t matter if he’s flirting.  “Did you?” he says lightly, turning his attention back to the crowd.  

“Some people find that sort of thing a little unsettling, you know.”

Soonyoung tries to metaphorically kill the tiny part of himself that’s telling him to swoon, and composes himself as best he can.  “Some people find it flattering.”  Just because he’s here for business (or whatever) doesn’t mean he can’t have a little fun, right?  “You’re not exactly giving off unsettled vibes at the moment.”

The interest in Wonwoo’s expression is quickly giving way to something else as his grin gets wider and his eyes get darker.  Soonyoung makes a mental note to never reveal any of this to Chan or Hansol, especially the fact that Jeon Wonwoo _definitely_ likes guys.  “Maybe I’m not,” Wonwoo says, and his voice seems to get even deeper when he does.  “What’s your name?”

Soonyoung laughs.  He can’t help it—he just really loves having the upper hand.  “I have to say, I’m a little disappointed...you don’t seem to remember me from before tonight.”

Wonwoo tilts his head curiously.  “I would _definitely_ remember if I’d seen you before tonight.”

So Soonyoung looks around surreptitiously, then raises the lapel of his jacket to cover the lower half of his face.  He snickers triumphantly as the smile drops from Wonwoo’s face and his eyes widen.

“Oh my god,” he says, grabbing Soonyoung’s arm and steering him even further away from the crowd.  “What are you doing here?!”

Soonyoung’s hand flies to his chest, feigning offense.  “I’ll have you know I contributed a _very_ generous donation to this gallery, Jeon Wonwoo, blood type A, birthday July seventeenth, philanthropist by day, criminal mastermind by night?  Possibly vice versa?”  He takes a drink of his champagne, enjoying the shocked anger blossoming on Wonwoo’s features.  “It’s interesting, you know, normally I don’t get along with Cancers.”

“You still don’t,” Wonwoo hisses darkly.  “We are not ‘getting along’ by anyone’s definition.”

Soonyoung pouts.  “After you laughed at my joke and everything?  That hurts, Jeon Wonwoo.”

“Stop calling me that.”

Right.  Soonyoung is now wondering how he managed to forget that this guy is infuriating just because he’s hot.  How on earth is calling him by his _own name_ going to give anything away?  Soonyoung raises his eyebrows and examines his nails.  “I haven’t told anyone our little secret, if that’s what you’re worried about.”  He sneaks a sidelong glance at Wonwoo just as Wonwoo downs his glass of champagne, looking frazzled.  Soonyoung watches in stunned amusement, laughing through his nose.

Wonwoo shakes his head and exhales hard.  “Just shut up, don’t talk about secrets, and stop calling me by my full name, it’s suspicious as hell.”  He keeps looking back and forth like Soonyoung's mere presence is going to tip people off. “Do you understand how monumentally stupid it is for you to be here?”

“Why?”  Soonyoung shrugs.  “As far as anyone knows I’m some random patron of the arts.  I told the donation lady I didn’t want my name on the donor list.  It shouldn’t even matter that I’m here.”  He pauses to look Wonwoo up and down, and lowers his voice.  “Unless you have something planned tonight?”

He sizes Soonyoung up for a second, eyes narrowing.  “Do you?”

“Just looking for the best place to stick a you-know-what.”  He flashes a wide smile when he says it, and Wonwoo looks even _more_ livid.  The satisfaction it gives him is short lived, though, and replaced with a whole different feeling when Wonwoo grabs his arm again and maneuvers him a short distance down the hall.  Soonyoung giggles a little crazily as he’s shoved into a bathroom, dropping his champagne glass in the process.

Once they’re securely locked in and alone, Wonwoo corners Soonyoung against the door and spits out “Do you have a fucking _bomb_ on you right now?”

“Hm.  Wouldn’t that be something?”  Soonyoung peers up at Wonwoo through his lashes in his most coquettish look, quirking an eyebrow, and continues:  “You’d better be gentle with me, just in case.”

It takes Wonwoo by surprise, and Soonyoung’s smirk turns positively evil when he speaks again, stuttering.  “Why—I’m—why are you stalking me.”  All business, this guy. Soonyoung scowls when he jabs a finger into his chest.  “I know the police thing was you.”

That’s not exactly impressive, considering he left a note.  Soonyoung rolls his eyes.  “I can’t dislike police without having some agenda regarding _you?_  Honestly, I didn’t even know you were there until I saw the newspaper article.”  Wonwoo doesn’t look convinced, which isn’t fair, because that’s not even a lie.  “This time...well.  I’ve been reading up, and I just think you’re a very interesting person.  What’s your Hogwarts house?”

Wonwoo stares in utter disbelief.  “You’re insane,” he says, shaking his head.

Rude?  Soonyoung laughs.  “You weren’t quite this hostile a minute ago.”  Wonwoo’s face doesn’t show any change in emotion, but his jaw clenches and Soonyoung notices.  “Now if you’d kindly excuse me, I have _work_ to do.”  Wonwoo doesn’t budge, so Soonyoung sighs.  “Look, unless you’re gonna make use of having me shoved up against this wall, this is a waste of our time.  So...”  He pushes off from the door, only to find himself roughly forced back against it with a thud.  He also finds Wonwoo even closer to him than before, eyes flashing hot and angry as he glares down at Soonyoung.  

“You need to go home,” Wonwoo growls.  Soonyoung really, really hates that that voice bossing him around is making him...have the reaction he’s currently trying to stifle.  “And you need to leave us alone.  I’m not asking.”

What Wonwoo doesn’t know is that Soonyoung has a pocketful of poison darts he could stick him with, and Wonwoo would fall down, pass out, wake up with Soonyoung long gone and home free.  Soonyoung considers it, but ultimately decides against it, because—he doesn’t even know anymore.  He likes a challenge, maybe?  He’s an idiot?  All the blood in his body is rushing to his dick and he can’t think straight?  Instead he just keeps staring Wonwoo down, until finally he holds up his hands in defeat.  “Fine, alright, you win.  I’ll go.”

 _Now_ Wonwoo looks confused, like he’s knows he’s missing something, because Soonyoung wouldn’t have given up so easy—and he’s right.  Soonyoung had his plan as soon as he’d sized up the gallery and overheard someone describing the ribbon cutting ceremony.  After a moment of squinting suspiciously at Soonyoung, searching his eyes as if looking long enough will help him gauge what he’s up to, Wonwoo steps back.  Soonyoung gives an exaggerated huff and straightens out his jacket.  When he opens the door, he turns back to Wonwoo, smiling and waving at him with one hand before blowing him a kiss.  “See you later, honey.”

He sees Wonwoo’s jaw clench again before he turns and leaves without looking back, smirking as he makes his way out of the building.  This is more like it, Soonyoung thinks—the score feels slightly closer to even, though he doesn’t want to let himself get _too_ comfortable.  He’s pretty sure he has not seen the last of Jeon Wonwoo.

The problem is, he’s really not sure he minds.

 

— — — — —

 

Soonyoung returns to the gallery the next night, in his all black and mask instead of suit and tie.  There’s security milling around the back doors, which he quickly dispatches with a couple of darts, and he makes his way in just as the crowd is gathering for the ribbon cutting.  Someone shouts at him, possibly a caterer, and Soonyoung swears, turning around slowly before hitting her with a dart as well.  He hates having to drag people away from the scene—it’s such a waste of time, not to mention it makes him feel like a much more _evil_ criminal than he really is.  But he drags the girl outside anyway, looks up at the dark clouds gathering in the sky for just a second, and whispers a quick apology to the unconscious bodies that are probably going to end up soaked before hurrying back inside as fast as he can.  

The bomb he’s got with him tonight is special in that it’s not _really_ a bomb in the traditional, huge, exploding sense; it’s a tiny incendiary device, so it won’t blow anything up, probably won’t even damage the outside of the building at all, depending on how quick the sprinklers and/or the fire department take care of things.  It’s only meant to start a fire on the inside, and ruin all the art while the people are outside cutting their stupid ribbon.  Soonyoung stands in the middle of the main gallery, taking it in one last time now that it’s empty, and sits his bomb toward the back wall, where the fire will hit more things directly, and hopefully spread fast.  Then he flashes a peace sign to each camera on the walls, waving to the last one, and walks out the way he came.

He detours through a couple of shady backstreets, looking over his shoulder every few steps, and hurries to the roof of the building he’s going to be watching and detonating from.  It’s just across the street from the gallery—the first floor is a bakery, the second floor, he’s not sure.  Either way, it’s closed, but he sneaks up the fire escape as quietly as he can.  He crouches by the edge of the roof, watches through his binoculars for a few minutes, and as the ceremony looks to be called to order, he takes out the detonator.  He’s about to press the button when thunder rumbles overhead, and he hesitates just for a second—long enough to remember rain won’t affect this job, because the fire’s not meant to spread outside.  Long enough to hear someone call out behind him.

“Excuse me,” the voice says lightly, and Soonyoung stands and whirls around, finding himself face to face for the first time with Wonwoo’s sister Seulgi.  He feels his heart drop into his stomach when he sees she’s carrying his fucking bomb.

Seulgi closes the remaining distance between them fast, but with an air of casual indifference completely inappropriate for someone holding something that was seconds away from melting her face off.  “I believe this belongs to you.”  She holds it out to him and she's _smiling._ Soonyoung stares at her with wide eyes, processing everything that just happened before he can even begin to respond.

“Do you have a fucking _deathwish?_ ” he growls when he finally does, gritting his teeth.  Soonyoung snatches the device back from her, checking it over to make sure she hasn’t damaged it or knocked anything out of place or fucking triggered it somehow.  He looks up when he’s satisfied, and she’s already making her way back across the roof.  “Hey!” he shouts.  “That was really really stupid!  I was about to set this thing off!”  She turns back, crossing her arms.  “Your burning flesh would have clashed terribly with that outfit.”

Huffing, she strides back toward him.  “Listen to me.  Whatever you’re doing, chasing us around like this, whatever you think you know—please just forget it.  Just stay out of our way, and don’t get any _ideas_ , because—” she reaches up and pulls down his mask.  His mouth drops open in shock and offense and he can’t even bring himself to pull it back up.  “—I’ve seen your face now, and I have plenty of very powerful friends.”  She takes a moment to tuck her short hair behind her ear.  “Disarm it.”

Soonyoung laughs.  “Fuck you.”  He spins around, turning the device over in his hands, looking back down toward the gallery.  He makes a show of winding back as though he’s going to throw it like a baseball, and speaks without looking at Seulgi.  “I could probably just launch this down there.  Do you think I could make it?”

In an instant, he feels her behind him, twisting his arm down painfully with one hand and holding something sharp to his neck with the other.  “I dare you,” she hisses in his ear, low and completely fucking terrifying, and as much as Soonyoung wants to see something burn, he really doesn’t relish the thought of having his throat slit.  “I’m gonna let go of your arm.  Think carefully about the smartest course of action to take when I do.”

She lets go.  Soonyoung takes a second to still his shaking hands, then gently pops open the back panel on his device and pulls one of the wires.  “Happy?”

The knife gets lowered from his throat and he turns around—Seulgi’s holding out her hand expectantly, and Soonyoung looks at her in disbelief.  “Do you know how to safely dispose of explosive material?”  She ponders for a second, then nods in acknowledgment.  Seconds later, bafflingly, she’s laughing, tinkly and light, running a hand through her hair.

“Alright,” she says, exhaling.  “Now that that’s done.”  Soonyoung looks around, one eyebrow raised in confusion and paranoia as he gingerly pokes at the shallow cut Seulgi’s knife had made on his throat.  “Nice to meet you.  Remember what I said, just stay out of our way, okay?  I don’t want to have to pull a knife on you again, I’m sure you’re a nice guy.”  She gives him a smile—genuine, with just a tiny glint of hardness in her eyes.  “Enjoy your evening!”

With that, she turns and walks away, disappearing over the ladder and down side of the building.  Soonyoung slowly lowers himself down until he’s sitting, staring off into the distance.  Everything that just happened is...just, completely ridiculous—so ridiculous that he starts laughing, keeps laughing even when he puts his mask back on, is still laughing as he makes his way back down the fire escape and into the alley behind the bakery.  He’s just gotten himself calmed down and is about to book it back home when he feels a hand wrap around his wrist and pull him off to the side—he’s pretty sure he knows who it’ll be before he even turns to look.  “I told you,” he hears Jeon Wonwoo’s voice say, confirming his suspicions.  Soonyoung almost bursts out laughing again, but anger has caught up with him by this point.  

He wrenches his arm out of Wonwoo’s grasp and eyes him, vexed to say the least.  “You didn’t have to tattle on me to your sister.”

“Could be worse.  She could have killed you.  Easily.”

Soonyoung sighs.  “God, yeah, what the fuck is it with you two?  You pulled a gun on me, she put a knife to my throat…I’ve done nothing to deserve this heinous mistreatment.”  Wonwoo’s mouth opens to answer, but Soonyoung shakes his head and interrupts him before he can start talking.  “Whatever.  I know what I supposedly _did._ But you don’t have a monopoly on criminal activity, you know.”  He frowns.  “And I gave you Wen Junhui.”

“I _took_ Wen Junhui, if I remember correctly.”  

“Either way.”

Wonwoo crosses his arms and leans one shoulder against the wall of the building.  “You can’t possibly expect me to believe you don’t understand what a risk it is to have you keep showing up wherever we are.”

“I’m well aware of the _risk_.  I just don’t care about it.”  Soonyoung leans back, letting his head rest against the cool brick behind him.  He closes his eyes, already feeling the letdown of preparing for yet _another_ job only to have it fizzle out, and reaches up to rub at one tense shoulder, digging his fingers in until the muscles burn.  “You are such an uptight prick.”

There’s a noncommittal noise from Wonwoo and an unceremonious shrug of his shoulders when Soonyoung cracks one eye open to look at him.  “I just know what I'm doing.”

Soonyoung bristles.  “ _I_ _know_ what I'm doing,” he retorts.  This feels—so unnaturally casual, and he’s starting to get annoyed again.  “And I know what _you’re_ doing, too.”

“Yeah?  What am I doing?”  He looks amused, like he doesn’t believe Soonyoung actually knows.  Soonyoung holds his gaze for a few seconds before raising his eyebrows and launching into his well-crafted, painstakingly researched theory.

“Wen Junhui wrote the article that got your parents put away.  I assume you had something going on at the police fundraiser, too—I’m not one hundred percent sure who you would have targeted or why, had I not intervened, but with all those cops there you had plenty of options.”  Wonwoo’s tiny smirk falters just barely.  Soonyoung pauses to look up as a few raindrops finally fall.  “I think you planted something in Wen Junhui’s house that got him in huge trouble and you’re planning to do the same to anyone else who had a hand in the thing with your parents.  And honestly, I can’t believe you weren’t looked into when Junhui got taken down.  He was squeaky clean, and you have motive coming out your ass.”

Annoyance sparks up in Wonwoo’s expression as he looks at Soonyoung, lips pursed, squinting.  He huffs out an unimpressed laugh, but Soonyoung can tell he’s more bothered than he’s letting on, if only slightly.  “Is that the best you can do?” he asks, but his voice wavers almost imperceptibly—almost.  He’s shaken.  Good.

“You know,” Soonyoung says, stepping toward Wonwoo and looking up at him, lowering his voice.  “If I can figure it out, I’m pretty sure others can too.”

Wonwoo’s face has lost all traces of amusement now, fake or not.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think I do,” Soonyoung sing-songs, poking Wonwoo in the chest and then dragging his finger down the front of his suit jacket.

He tries to step back out of Soonyoung’s reach, but Soonyoung follows, smirking.  “If you’re convinced you’re right,” Wonwoo says, swallowing hard enough that Soonyoung notices it happening, “you should be pretty fucking scared of pissing me off.”

“I’m not scared of you at all, Wonwoo.  I think you _like_ me.”

“Then you’re even more out of touch than you seem.”

“How much you flirted with me last night before you knew who I was says otherwise.”

It's raining more steadily now, and Wonwoo pulls his jacket around himself as he lets out a cold laugh that _almost_ leaves no trace of how rattled he is.  He shakes his head and looks at a spot on the brick wall beside him for a few seconds, before laughing again and taking a step backward.  “Goodbye, Hoshi.”

Soonyoung puts on an exaggerated pout, wringing his hands just before Wonwoo turns to leave with a roll of his eyes.  “Baby, we can’t go to bed angry, don’t leave, not like this!”  Wonwoo turns around and plasters a fake smile on his face, walks backwards for a few steps while flipping Soonyoung off with both hands, and Soonyoung laughs, dropping his fake desperation.  “You don’t at least want a selfie to remember me by?”

Wonwoo keeps walking, leaving Soonyoung alone.  Soonyoung deflates, sighing hard at his back as he goes—he feels much more one-upped than the last time they went their separate ways.  The need for revenge is piling up again, but for now...he thinks maybe he needs a break—a real, self-imposed explosive sabbatical, lock up his lab, stay away from toxic fumes for a bit, the whole shebang.  Jeon Wonwoo is throwing him off his game, and it’s not fucking cool.

 

— — — — —

 

A break ends up consisting of Soonyoung sulking for days on end, fingers itching to build something, anything, and getting scolded by Chan no less than five times for trying to sneak off to his lab.  It ends up consisting of him daydreaming about getting back at Wonwoo in dramatic, impossible ways and getting so restless he could scream.  He drives himself insane wondering if he’s lost his mojo for good or if he’s just in a slump.  He tries to get laid, thinking he can at least fix _that_ problem—and fails, because the guy on the app asks what he does for a living, and he’s too stressed out to lie, so he just ignores it.  It doesn’t even surprise him when he jerks off and it’s Wonwoo’s infuriatingly gorgeous face he’s imagining, because why _wouldn’t_ it be, why _not_ add that to the pile of fucked up things making him go god damn crazy.

It’s two weeks and nine Wonwoo-induced orgasms later before Hansol bursts in without knocking one night—evidently Chan’s given him their security codes, which, whatever—and Soonyoung looks up from the ramen he’s been brooding over, startled.  “Can I help you?”

“Have you seen,” Hansol asks urgently.  Soonyoung looks around warily, and shrugs.  It’s late, and his eyes are tired from staring at the TV for hours, and he definitely needs more to go on than _have you seen._  “There’s a picture from that thing you went to.”

Soonyoung blinks.  “A picture of what?”

Hansol holds out his phone, and Soonyoung’s eyes search the photo it shows before snatching it out of his hand, nearly choking.

“A picture of you.” 

And there he is—it’s blurry, he’s off to the side and far back from the camera, he’s facing mostly away and no one who doesn’t know him would be able to recognize the fuzzy, indistinct splotches of color that are his facial features—but his shock of red hair is unmistakable.  Fuck?  Every job he’s done, every person he’s made eye contact with, every stupid selfie he’s taken from behind his mask flashes through his mind.  Fuck, fuck.  He’s such an idiot. 

This _look_ crosses Hansol’s face, just for a second.  Soonyoung expects anger, or something, because he was reckless, and messy, but that’s not it.  He just looks worried, sympathetic maybe.  “The internet is going nuts.  The person who posted it said it looked like your hair—Hoshi’s hair—now everyone’s trying to sleuth you out.”  He sits down next to Soonyoung on the couch, eyes wide.  “Is this bad?  How bad is this?”

Soonyoung chews on his lip, staring at the photo again, unblinking.  How bad is it.  “I’m not sure,” he says slowly, and looks up at Hansol.  There’s this rushing sound in his ears.  He holds Hansol’s gaze and tries really, really hard not to let him know how terrified he is.  This is the absolute closest to disaster things have ever come, and it’s suffocating him.  “Um.  Bad, maybe.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

He can't understand why Hansol isn't angry.  This is what he's been worried about this whole time, right?  He's been wary of Soonyoung and protective of Chan at the mere thought of something like this happening, and now that it's happening he's being _understanding?_

“I guess, uh...don’t tell Chan?  I’ll tell him,” Soonyoung adds at Hansol’s hesitant look.  “I just have to decide what I’m going to do, and I want to be the one to tell him.”

Hansol’s eyebrows are knit together, but he nods.  “Okay.”  He stands.  “Okay.”  Soonyoung watches him head down the hall and calls out to him, quietly.

“Hansol,” he says.  “I’m—I'll figure it out.  I swear I’ll figure it out.”

He nods at Soonyoung again.  “I know you will.”  He disappears into Chan’s room, and the second Soonyoung hears the click of the door shutting his breathing goes haywire.  He drops his head into his hands, gasping for air, pushing his palms into his eye sockets.

Fuck.  He doesn’t have a plan for this.  Fuck.  This is the problem with being Soonyoung:  he plans, but not well enough; he’s careful, but not careful enough; he’s smart, but not smart enough.  He doesn’t know what to do.  The list of precautions he’s taken in case something like this happened runs through his head, his stupid fake name and forged paperwork—not enough.  It isn’t enough.  If he gets caught—

If he gets caught.  He glances toward Chan’s door.  He can’t get caught. 

He runs out of the house with only his keys and his phone and drives up to the outskirts of town, pulls right up to the edge of the bluffs overlooking the city.  It’s high.  If he was afraid of heights, he’d be freaking out—but he has much bigger things on his mind.  The hood of his car is still warm, but he climbs up anyway, standing gingerly.  

Chan’s afraid of heights.  Soonyoung takes out his hearing aids, squeezes his eyes shut, and yells as loud as he can.  There’s no echo, no response, just his voice disappearing into the valley of tiny lights below.  That’s all.

He should have stopped.  There are a million reasons he should have stopped way before now.  He should have stopped after the police fucked up his bridge collapse all those years ago.  He should have stayed in retirement after Chan finally returned his emails and let him explain what happened.  He shouldn’t have started up again after he and Chan became friends, because he’d—he’d already done enough to Chan.  He never, ever should have kept going when he and Chan moved in together, implicating Chan in probably every single thing he’s done, but he did, and now...now there’s _this_.

If he’s honest:  he just hadn’t thought this would happen.  That's why he doesn't plan enough, isn't careful enough.  It hadn’t crossed his mind, because it’s never been the kind of thing to cross his mind—not until it’s happening, because what’s the point of worrying about it, if it’s not happening?

Only now it’s happening.  Soonyoung had always known he was lucky in a lot of his jobs, but he'd never considered how abruptly that luck could run out.  He's considering it now, though; it's eating him alive and all he can see when he closes his eyes is that fucking bridge collapsing, and Chan’s face as he watched cement and steel put his parents in the bottom of the river.

With a heavy, shuddering sigh, he sits down.  He looks out across the city below, to the far-off hills on the other side.  There are a few pinpricks of light between the trees, and Soonyoung remembers—from his extensive research—there’s only one house up there, and he knows whose it is.  He stares as the cool breeze ruffles his hair, and laughs softly, shaking his head.  Then he laughs again, louder.  Of all Soonyoung’s stupid, idiotic, _risky_ , will-never-work-in-a-million-years ideas...well, this is maybe the worst, and it doesn’t even involve anything exploding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I STILL EXIST. i'm going to be trying to keep the chapters under 10k because i value my sanity and yours. updates from here on out will have significantly more Actual Soonwoo i promise!!!


	3. Chapter 3

“Nice,” Chan says, looking up from the kitchen table and gesturing to Soonyoung’s newly black hair as Soonyoung sits down with him the next morning.  “What’s the occasion?”  It’s too casual, so Soonyoung waits, and sure enough he continues after a few seconds of strained silence—“Where were you all night?”  

Right.  “Sorry.  I should have called.”  Soonyoung had dyed his hair in a gas station bathroom and he’d only come home once he’d drained his cell phone battery planning his stupid idea.  When he’d woken up, he’d made a call claiming to be someone he wasn’t.  He wonders when the fake identities are going to start running together.  He clears his throat.  “Channie,” he says.  “There’s this picture—”

“I have a google alert on Hoshi, remember?”  Of course he does. “I’ve already seen it.”  Chan looks too understanding of all this, but he’s always been too understanding, hasn’t he?  Soonyoung can tell by his resigned expression that he knows what Soonyoung’s planning.  He hesitates before he continues.  “How long will you be gone?”

Soonyoung sighs, refusing to break eye contact with Chan no matter how badly he wants to.  “I’m not sure.”

They look at each other for a second, Chan searching Soonyoung’s face and looking for hints of anything in the slump of his shoulders, the bags under his eyes.  “How’s the farm?” Chan asks, squinting at him.  Soonyoung smiles, just a little.

“The chickens are roosting,” he says, firmly.  It’s their secret code, to keep each other safe.  The chickens are roosting means he’s fine, everything’s fine, Chan doesn’t need to be worried—but hearing that everything’s fine doesn’t cancel out worry, so Chan still looks worried.  “I’m serious, okay?  Imagine something between the chickens roosting and the strawberries ripening.  That’s where we’re at.  If the strawberries were ripening—if—”  He lowers his voice, out of habit.  “If I thought people really knew who I was, where I was, and _that’s_ why I was leaving, then I would say the strawberries are ripening, but they’re not.  I just want to head it off at the pass, yeah?  Make sure the strawberries don’t ripen.”  Chan nods, still seeming unconvinced, and Soonyoung kicks his leg lightly under the table.  “We have a code for a reason, I’m not bullshitting you.”

Chan just chews on his lip.  “Where will you go?”

Soonyoung shakes his head, leaning forward onto his elbows.  “I can’t tell you, Channie.”

“Right.”  He looks down into his lap.  “Today?”

“Yeah,” he says, smiling at Chan, refusing to look as sad as he feels.  “Just for awhile, okay?  I'm coming back, I promise.  I’m fine, you’re fine, _everything’s_ fine, I’m leaving you a burner, it’s not like it’s gonna be total radio silence.  You don’t need to worry.  No more than usual.”

“ _You’re_ worried,” Chan says.  “That makes me worried.”

“I’m not worried.”  It’s a lie. “Honestly.”  He’s never had to lie to Chan before.  Their entire relationship has been based on truth from the very beginning...but nothing like this has ever happened before.  Not that that makes him feel any better.  “It’s just—people _saw_ me at that stupid art gallery, and now there’s this picture—I don’t want to put you at risk any more than I already have.  Than I already do.”

The thing about Chan being the person who knows Soonyoung best in the world, though, is that he can always, always see through his bullshit.  He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair before he replies, and it’s amazing how small it makes Soonyoung feel.  “You _know_ I knew what I was signing up for the second I decided not to hate you, right?”

 

— — — — —

 

Soonyoung had called Kang Seulgi’s PR agent, who, if he had to guess, is unaware of the _actual_ business she’s running—either that or she’s far too trusting of people claiming to be journalists and asking for interviews.  Whichever it is, Soonyoung’s got a duffle bag stuffed under the park bench he’s sitting on, and a hell of a favor to ask—and he _really_ wishes he had a much stronger drink than the pink lemonade he’s clutching.  There’s now a notice from the police offering a reward to anyone who can provide information about the blurry, red haired guy from the photo, and he needs this to work more than ever.

He spots her after just a few minutes of waiting—she gets out of a shiny black car and says something to the driver, who stays parked outside the cafe they’re meeting across from.  Soonyoung watches over his sunglasses as she crosses the street and stands maybe four feet away from his bench, taking out her phone.  He feels his burner vibrate in his pocket and takes a sip of his lemonade.  Seulgi frowns, and makes her way to his bench, sitting on the other end.  Soonyoung leans back.

“Hello,” he says, not looking at her.

Beside him, Soonyoung can just make out her head slowly raising.  He clears his throat and takes off his sunglasses, wiping them casually on his shirt before replacing them, still not turning toward Seulgi.  “Sorry.  I didn’t know how else to get in touch with you, and it was an emergency.”

She laughs.  Soonyoung looks at her then.  She’s more amused than angry, and more annoyed than confused.  A group of teenagers walks by, and once they’ve passed, she sighs.  “I assume this is about your picture.”

For a second it throws him off, until it clicks—of course.  He should have _known_.  Why didn’t he realize?  Of course it was them.  Fuck.  Anger flashes through him, making his heart rise into his throat; he clenches his fists and tries to swallow it down but, _fuck_.  He’s fucked.  Soonyoung’s eyes scan the whole area, looking for the quickest escape route, as Seulgi speaks again.

“I told him not to.”  She actually has the nerve to sound apologetic.  “I told him he shouldn’t be complaining about you ‘stalking’ him when he’s being every bit as annoying about you.”  Well.  Okay.  It wasn’t her, he’s marginally less fucked, but also: mother _fucker_ , just wait until Soonyoung gets his hands on Jeon fucking Wonwoo.  “It’s just that my brother can be...obstinate,” she continues delicately.  “I can have it taken down, if it’ll help.  Talk to my friends at the station, see how serious they are about it.”

Soonyoung scoffs.  “Everyone on the internet’s already dying to be the one to catch me, especially now that there’s a reward.”  He pauses, even though he's rehearsed this in his head a hundred times by now. “Some of us don't have the luxury of being beloved by high society and therefore above suspicion.”  

“We aren’t above suspicion.  We’ve just worked very hard to make sure suspicion is as far as it ever goes.”  She's eyeing him skeptically now, and he turns away, looking down at his drink and shaking his head.  

“I cannot get linked to that picture.”

“And I’ve offered to help.  What else am I supposed to do about it?” Seulgi replies.  “You’re not exactly subtle, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before.”

 _I wasn’t chasing you two around like an idiot before,_ he thinks.  Yes, it’s his fault for ending up in a picture, but it could have been fine without Wonwoo’s interference.  “I need to be out of sight for awhile.”  He exhales hard.  “I want you to hide me.”

When Soonyoung looks at her, her face is blank, like she’s still processing—and then her eyebrows raise and her lips part just a little.  She smiles, incredulous, and stands, grabbing Soonyoung by the arm.  (Soonyoung is so _over_ being manhandled by these two, he thinks, before his awful brain reminds him how he probably would let Jeon Wonwoo manhandle him to a much further extent.)  He grabs his duffle bag as fast as he can and lets Seulgi yank him away from the bench.

“This is _not_ an answer, I’m just not doing this out in the open,” she says, leading him over to that black car and—okay.  Now he’s getting nervous. Soonyoung absolutely does not want to get in that car.  But he goes, even though crossing the street gives him enough time to consider all the flaws and risks in this plan.  Stupid.  This was a really stupid idea.  If he doesn’t try this, though, he has to go further away, post up in a hotel somewhere, and that makes this all _way_ too Gone Girl.  More importantly, he wants to be close to Chan—he needs to stay close to Chan, just in case—in case.  In case something, in case anything, even if it’s objectively more dangerous.  He can’t go too far.

As Seulgi opens the car door and gestures inside he tries to play it cool, taking a deep breath and leaning in close to her without making eye contact.  “If you’re gonna kill me, can you just tell me?  I’ll fuck off somewhere far away and I won’t bother you anymore.”

“Oh my god, just get _in,”_ she snaps, and shoves him down and through the door with a surprising amount of strength.  Soonyoung winces, reluctantly situating himself on the far side of the backseat as Seulgi follows him inside and slams the door shut.  It’s practically pitch black inside from the severe tint of the windows and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust even after he removes his sunglasses.  He blinks a few times just as he hears the driver speak up from the front seat.

“Everything okay?”

Seulgi’s smoothing out her skirt beside him.  “Yes, it’s fine,” she says lightly.

Soonyoung looks up at the person in the driver’s seat.  He seems pretty standard, with his fancy black suit and dark glasses (Soonyoung wonders how he can see.)  The car, though, is anything _but_ standard—there are so many buttons on the console it’s frankly ridiculous, and Soonyoung has no clue what they could even be for.  

“What?!”  He exclaims, cursing himself for not using his fortune to buy a much fancier car than the one he has, forgetting the situation he’s in completely and leaning up between the front seats to get a closer look.  “Oh my god, you’re _Batman._ ”  Soonyoung turns toward the driver, who is probably glaring at him from behind his glasses.  “Are you Alfred?”

One of Seulgi’s tinkly laughs floats out of the backseat, and Soonyoung sits back next to her.  “Ha!  Minghao—you _are_ Alfred,” she says.  It’s interesting—Soonyoung hasn’t had this much prolonged interaction with a new person in awhile.  He almost thinks he and Seulgi could be friends, if circumstances were slightly different. She amuses herself poking fun at Minghao for a moment, then looks at Soonyoung, the smile lingering in the corners of her eyes.  “So.”  Seulgi tilts her head, slowly, and lowers her eyebrows a smidge.  “Why would I agree to hide you?”

Soonyoung clears his throat and puts his full attention on her.  He doesn’t seem to be dead, which means she brought him in here to hear him out, which means he’s not totally done for yet.  “You and your brother have this whole sophisticated operation going on and as far as I can tell?  No one suspects a thing.  I make myself scarce ninety percent of the time, but there are still a few people who know I exist and know my face, even if they don’t know me as Hoshi.  And to those people—I’m kind of this weird loner, which is _super suspicious._ A weird loner who up until last night had a very distinctive hair color.”  There’s a tiny smile on her face as she listens to him.  “Putting aside the fact that it’s your god damn brother’s fault that my face is on literal fucking wanted posters—I could help you.  I don’t know all the details of whatever it is you’re doing, but I can help.  We can team up—bad guys do it all the time!”

“Are we bad guys?”

“Whatever, semantics.”  Yeah, obviously, it’s not that cut and dry, but hello, they’re _criminals_.  “We’re definitely not good guys,” he says with a laugh.

Seulgi looks past him then, out the window, and gives a small smirk and a quiet _ha._ “Speaking of my god damn brother,” she says, and Soonyoung whips around to follow her gaze—just as the car door opens and Wonwoo appears, happily sipping on a lemonade of his own.  Soonyoung frantically looks back at Seulgi and scoots toward her.  The car goes silent and there's still a small grin on Wonwoo’s face as he sits down—and then he looks up at who he thinks is his sister, but turns out to be Soonyoung.

Slowly, his face falls; it shifts into some mix of disgust and disbelief, and Soonyoung is highly amused.  He tries not to laugh, but Wonwoo’s nostrils are flared and he keeps clenching and unclenching his jaw, and it’s fucking hilarious watching his face as he tries to come to terms with what he's seeing.  Namely, Soonyoung, smirking in the backseat of his car, waving one hand at him while winking cheekily.

“What,” Wonwoo says, dumbstruck, looking between Soonyoung and Seulgi before landing firmly on Soonyoung.   _“What?”_

“We’ve been played, brother dear,” Seulgi says.

Wonwoo’s eyes don’t leave Soonyoung as he addresses his sister.  “What the _fuck_ is he doing here?”

“ _Someone_ ,” she says, shifting in the car seat to lean back and cross one leg over the other, “decided it would be fun to make an anonymous post outing him as Hoshi.”

He stops glaring daggers at Soonyoung then, aiming them at Seulgi instead.  “Well he wasn’t wearing a mask, which I’m _told_ ,” he forces out through gritted teeth, “is a _rookie mistake_.”  Soonyoung presses his lips together to keep from laughing.

Seulgi doesn’t answer, just turns her attention back to Soonyoung.  “I’m still listening.”

“Right.  I, uh.”  He exhales a breath quickly.  “I guess this is a lot to ask and you have no reason to say yes and you could still just gut me like a fish and have Alfred here bleach your car seats later,” he says, and her grin widens, which is terrifying.  He shakes it off and continues.  “But you owe me.  And, you know, whatever weird clandestine shit you’re doing is working fine, I’m sure.  But wouldn’t it be cooler,” he pauses dramatically, grinning and waving his hands up in the air between them, wiggling his fingers, “with explosions?”

There’s a quiet burst of laughter from the front seat, and Soonyoung shoots a dark look that way, just as Wonwoo starts talking again.  “Wait,” he says, incredulous, “you want to—what?  Work with us?”

“He wants to stay with us until he’s not the focus of a witch hunt,” Seulgi responds, “and I’m considering it.”  She squints, chewing the inside of her lip in thought.  “I’m just trying to decide whether you’re stupid, or if you’re stupid and also some kind of genius.”

Soonyoung lets himself hear the shades of impressed disbelief in her voice and clears his throat.  “Uh,” he says, voice softening.  “I mean, objectively, the second one.” He laughs nervously.

Seulgi quirks an eyebrow, and Wonwoo huffs in annoyance.  “ _Objectively_ , taking you in would not be a smart move.”

“I know, but...”  But.  Soonyoung hadn’t wanted to say this in front of _Wonwoo_ of all people, but he doesn’t seem to have a choice.  “If I get caught—my little brother’s been living with me this whole time, he knows what I do, he’s—I mean, he’s _helped_.  I’m just trying to avoid ruining his life.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then she sighs.  “Oh my god,” she mutters, shaking her head.  “Minghao.”  She pats the side of his headrest twice.

The way Wonwoo’s expression shifts as he realizes what’s happening is amazing—he cycles from skeptical to furious to shock to disbelief in a matter of seconds, and honestly?  Soonyoung’s landed somewhere around disbelief himself.  He’d known going into this that it was the _longest_ of long shots, so the fact that it seems to have worked has his eyes darting around the car and widening incredulously.

“I—are you sure?” Minghao asks, taking the question off Soonyoung’s lips, raised eyebrows just visible over his dark glasses in the rear view mirror.

Seulgi looks just a bit offended at his questioning.  “Yes,” she says sternly, then addresses Soonyoung with much the same tone she’d had after he’d disarmed his explosive—that casual, genuine friendliness, replacing her skeptical demeanor in an instant.  “So.  Hoshi.  Got a real name?”  The car starts moving, and all the tension leaves Soonyoung’s body at once in a sigh that deflates him.

“ _Fuck_ , I really thought you were going to kill me.”  He slides down the seat, running a hand through his hair and tilting his head up to face Seulgi.  “You’re terrifying.”

She shrugs, smiling brilliantly.  “Only when I need to be.”

Soonyoung pushes himself upright and chances a look at Wonwoo—he’s still glaring, at both Soonyoung and his sister in turns.  “ _Seulgi_ ,” he spits out, “what the _fuck_.”

Seulgi doesn’t look at him.  “Decision’s been made,” she says, her tone of voice simultaneously nonchalant and final.  Soonyoung thinks he would swoon, if he liked girls.  What a fucking _boss_.

However, boss or not, Wonwoo doesn’t seem nearly as impressed.  “Bull fucking shit it has.  This is so stupid.”

“Stupid is letting a random criminal get you this worked up.  You realize I had to have Jeonghan make sure they didn’t trace the post back to you?”

Soonyoung’s starting to feel intensely uncomfortable, stuck between the two of them.  They seem to have some kind of silent conversation—Wonwoo’s nostrils flare again, Seulgi flicks her hair out of her face and raises her eyebrows, Wonwoo squints and shakes his head, Seulgi shrugs and grins evilly.  Soonyoung is lost, but whatever it means, it seems to seal the deal for Wonwoo.  He runs a hand through his hair and looks at Soonyoung again, exhaling through his nose in anger—Soonyoung can almost see the smoke come pouring out.  

“Good,” says Seulgi.  She turns to Soonyoung and tilts her head to one side.  “You didn’t tell me your name.”

Turning to look out the back window instead of meeting Seulgi’s eyes, Soonyoung answers:   “Lee Minjun.”

The rest of the ride is quiet, mostly, and as Soonyoung watches out the window—the city giving way to grass giving way to hills—he hopes he’s doing the right thing.  He can never seem to suss out a clear answer to that, he can never seem to assess these situations rationally enough to put his options firmly into column A or column B.  It’s his own fault, he guesses, for getting into this in the first place, starting it for the reason he did; the lines were blurred then, and they’re blurred now.  Still, though, it’s _this_ that feels more wrong than anything he’s done in a while:  leaving the only family he’s got left, especially for something as stupid and cliche as _it’s for your own good_ —it makes him want to roll his eyes, even though in this case it’s just the truth.  He turns his attention back inside the car.  Seulgi’s tapping away on her phone, silent and elegant.  Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him that she’d agreed—if someone played the brother card with him he'd have done the same.  He doesn’t trust her, necessarily, but they do at least have something in common, she at least understands where he’s coming from, and hopefully that’ll be enough for this arrangement to work out.

Wonwoo shifts uncomfortably next to him, seemingly trying to scoot as far toward the door and away from Soonyoung as he can.  He's staring straight ahead, fingers tapping restlessly on one knee.  Soonyoung would be lying if he said the fact that Wonwoo is this rattled didn't tickle him pink, or if he said the heavy tension in the car and the anger radiating off Wonwoo didn't excite him in some fucked up way.  Seulgi is one thing, but Wonwoo—he’s a different story altogether.  Whatever that means. Soonyoung’s just planning to blow up that bridge when he gets to it.

 

— — — — —

 

The house itself is built into the side of the hill (and would therefore be a very intriguing target for an explosion.  Soonyoung has to physically shake the thought out of his head as they pull into the driveway.) With its several stories of floor to ceiling glass window panes, he can’t help but think how austere and sophisticated it looks—much like its inhabitants, only not quite as unwelcoming.  

That’s not fair, really, Soonyoung guesses.  Seulgi has been pretty welcoming, all things considered.  It’s Wonwoo who refuses to look at Soonyoung for the entire car ride, slams the car door in Soonyoung’s face before he can follow him out, and sneers at Soonyoung when he stands, glaring, slinging his bag over his shoulder.  There are a few seconds where they stare at each other like that, silently daring each other to say something.  Soonyoung feels rage threaten to fill him to the brim and overflow as he looks at Wonwoo and it sets in that he’s the reason Chan is in danger, but he refuses to show anything extreme, won’t let Wonwoo know just how affected he is.  Wonwoo looks back at him, almost smug, like being on Wonwoo’s home turf puts Soonyoung at a disadvantage.

Their staring contest gets interrupted by Seulgi grabbing Wonwoo by the shoulder and cheerfully telling the group to _come along, then._  By the time Soonyoung’s been led through the garage and into a long hallway, though, Seulgi and Wonwoo are at each other’s throats again.  “It makes the most _sense_ , Wonwoo,” Seulgi’s saying, as Wonwoo shakes his head.  Minghao walks next to Soonyoung, behind them, and gives him a look, rolling his eyes.  “You have the entire floor to yourself with the kitchenette and everything.  If he’s in hiding he needs to be where he’s got the least chance of being seen if someone visits.  Plus, I would much rather have him where someone can keep an eye on him.”

Soonyoung raises an eyebrow as he listens.  She’s putting him with _Wonwoo?_  That cannot be a good idea, logically, but the evil part of Soonyoung that desperately wants to see Wonwoo squirm (not to mention the part that’s still— _not_ obsessed, but undeniably intrigued by him) is a little bit delighted.  Wonwoo leans in close to Seulgi to respond.  “I want to make sure you know what you’re saying.  You’re sticking him with me because if he’s on my floor _he never has to leave._ ”  They’re both striding along the hallway and getting further and further ahead of Soonyoung and Minghao, but Minghao doesn’t make a move to speed up.  As they turn a corner, Soonyoung catches a glimpse into what looks like an enormous living room—it looks fancy, spotless, barely lived in, and it wouldn’t surprise Soonyoung if every room in the house looked the same.  What would two people even _do_ with this much space?  It’s just excessive.  He turns his attention back to Wonwoo, who’s still arguing with Seulgi.  “I’m your brother, you know.  You’re supposed to love me.”

“I do love you.  But you’re my _baby_ brother, which means I’m supposed to torture you.”

Keeping in step with Minghao, Soonyoung glances toward him.  “Are they usually like this?”

Minghao smirks.  “When they disagree about something.”  

“I’m not gonna be fucking _babysitting_ him,” Wonwoo says, and Soonyoung clears his throat loudly.  Seulgi and Wonwoo both turn around with looks on their faces like they’d forgotten he was there, despite their argument being about him.

“Not that rage isn’t pretty on you, but you should really chill out before you pop a blood vessel, honey.”  Soonyoung smirks when Minghao lets out some sort of tortured wheeze from beside him.  “I don’t need a babysitter.  I have no nefarious plans.  No plans at all, really.”

Wonwoo rolls his eyes, but Seulgi pales.  “Shit.  Minghao.” She grimaces.  “You ought to search him, probably.”

“You haven’t even fucking searched him?!” Wonwoo hisses.  “ _Seulgi_.”

“You’re distracting me!” she growls back, then turns to Soonyoung and grins pleasantly at him.  “Nothing personal, you understand.”

Soonyoung shrugs.  “I’ve got nothing to hide.”  

At this point they’ve reached what seems to be an elevator—Soonyoung snorts.  It’s just so ridiculous, and not fair in the slightest.   _Why_ do they have to be such cool fucking supervillains?  Moreover, why has Soonyoung not made more of an effort to be a cool supervillain?

“Empty your pockets,” Minghao says as they step onto the elevator, sounding wholly unaffected.  “And the bag.”  A little nervously, Soonyoung complies, unzipping his bag and thrusting his personal effects into the hands of the people around him.  He doesn’t have much with him; it’s mostly burner phones and a few changes of clothes and his notes, and he didn’t lie when he said he has nothing to hide, but he still hesitates and sighs before taking the money he’d stuffed into the lining of his bag and handing it to Minghao.  When he’s done, he turns his bag upside down and shakes it before dropping it on the ground.

“See?”  For emphasis, he takes out his hearing aids and holds them out for Minghao to see.  “And just in case you think I’m smuggling something _extremely_ cleverly, they’re perfectly legitimate and medically necessary.”  Minghao smirks and Soonyoung raises his arms up above his head and shimmies a little.  “Now are you gonna frisk me or is this strictly business?”

Minghao stifles a laugh as he bends down to start replacing Soonyoung’s things into his bag and Soonyoung feels awfully accomplished.  He glances at Wonwoo, finding him staring back at him, dead-eyed and unamused, until he turns to his sister.  They have another silent conversation, with lots of pointed looks aimed Soonyoung’s way.  He feels very exposed, or something—he wants to tell them to stop talking about him like he’s not even there, but then again, they’re not really talking, so stupid fucking Wonwoo would probably just huff out one of those icy laughs and roll his eyes and pretend he was completely innocent.  Soonyoung glares at his stupid face, before leaving a trail of contemptuous scrutiny down the slope of his idiotic neck, across the broad, flat planes of his moronic chest, around to his ridiculous flat ass and all the way down to his stupid expensive looking shoes.

He looks back up to Wonwoo’s face when the elevator stops and for the second time, Wonwoo catches Soonyoung very obviously checking him out.  The steely anger in Wonwoo’s expression dissolves into an unbearable smirk and Soonyoung, for the second time, does not look away.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t manage to play it nearly as cool this time; he feels himself visibly react to being caught, whatever lustful rage he must have been displaying sliding off his face as Seulgi and Minghao exit the elevator and Wonwoo’s face twists into this amused, menacing smile.

“Keep it in your pants, _Hoshi_.”

Soonyoung does his best to recover, closing his eyes and making kissy faces in Wonwoo’s direction.  When he opens them he’s alone in the elevator.  The doors have opened to a living area straight ahead and a small kitchen to the right.  He hurries off just in time to see Wonwoo disappear down a small hallway to the left and hear a door slam.

Asshole.  

Looking around, he sees that Minghao has taken it upon himself to go through Wonwoo’s refrigerator, and Soonyoung’s stomach growls, his pink lemonade no longer sustaining him—but Seulgi calls out to him before he can make any kind of beeline toward food.  “Over here,” she says breezily, and motions him toward the hallway, stopping to open the first door they come to. There are two more on the opposite wall—one of which Wonwoo is currently inside.  They’re going to be a hallway away from each other at any given moment.  This, Soonyoung thinks, does not bode well for his sanity or well-being, but he finds himself smirking all the same.  “The one at the end is the bathroom.  And…”  She nods toward the other door, the one nearer to the one she’s presently unlocking.  “That’s Wonwoo.”

The room is plain, even plainer than his Minjun room at home, but still manages to be nicer—or maybe it’s the whole minimalism thing the decor has going on tricking him into thinking so.  Either way, he doesn’t mind, and he walks to the far side of the room and pulls the curtains back, revealing floor-to-ceiling windows looking toward the city.  He takes in the view and whistles.

Behind him, Seulgi speaks, hesitant and stiff like she’s finally realized what she’s done.  “Does your brother know where you are?”

“No,” Soonyoung says.  “I didn’t tell him anything.  I didn’t even know if this would work.”

She purses her lips thoughtfully.  “But you have a way to contact him.”  Soonyoung nods.  “Let me know if he needs anything.  Or if you do, I guess.”

He smiles, a little sadly.  “Thank you.”

Silence takes the room as Seulgi bites her lip, regarding Soonyoung carefully.  She steps through the doorway and shuts the door behind her, leaning against it and crossing her arms.  “Minjun,” she says, slowly, enunciating each syllable and tilting her head to one side.  “I want to make sure you know why you’re here.”

Soonyoung looks around nervously, tensing up just at the hint of sharpness at the edges of her voice.  He doesn’t say anything, just waits for her to continue, and there’s friction in the air in the moments before she does.

“You are here,” she starts, “because you know too much, and it’ll be easier for us to keep an eye on you this way.”  Soonyoung pouts.  This doesn’t surprise him, but he resents the assumption that he’d turn in the first criminals he found out—is it so hard to believe he’d rather join forces?  It’s the _much_ cooler thing to do.  “The brother thing—sure.  I definitely believe you haven’t been careful enough to keep your brother safe.  But that’s not my problem.  Wonwoo giving the cops a lead on you?  Stupid, but the consequences that has on _you_ are really _not my problem_.”  True, he guesses, but it makes him want to sigh in annoyance anyway.  (He does not, because he thinks Seulgi might kill him.) “I recognize that you could have fucked us over by now, and you haven’t.  But I want you to understand that you’re here so I can make sure you _continue_ to not fuck us over, and that you don’t make any more trouble for us.  If you do, I will know. And I can stop you very, very easily.”

Soonyoung clears his throat, and nods quickly.  He’s been the target of Seulgi’s quietly terrifying threats too many times for his liking and he is _not_ a fan.  “Yup. Yeah.  Understood.”

She smiles.  “Great!  Ultimately, I think maybe I’m giving your actual skills as a criminal too much credit, though explosions are very intriguing to me.  Just can’t be too careful, you know?”

The unsettling speed with which Seulgi can shift in and out of hardass mode amuses Soonyoung almost as much as it intimidates him.  “When’s your birthday?”  he asks, and Seulgi’s smile turns confused.

“February tenth?”

“Huh.”  He points one finger at her, squinting.  “ _Your_ Aquarian ass could pass for a Gemini.”

Seulgi rolls her eyes, almost laughing.  “One more thing,” she says, giving him a look that’s skeptical and _knowing_.  “Don’t antagonize my brother too much.”

“He started it.”  She shakes her head in amusement and turns to leave.  “That monologue was fucking baller,” Soonyoung calls after her as she goes.  This time she does laugh; it lingers outside Soonyoung’s door as she disappears through it, and then it fades too.

As soon as she’s gone, he flops backwards onto the bed.  It’s stupidly comfortable, and he’s estimating the sheets have a thread count of at least a million.  He exhales, long and hard, and stares up at the ceiling.  This is the dumbest thing he has ever done.  It’s the dumbest thing he’s ever done and he’s now wondering desperately why he even did it.  Is there even any point, or is he just being an idiot?  Yes, he needs to lay low while the cops are extra hot on his trail.  Yes, he needs to do it away from Chan, just in case.  Yes, he’s borderline obsessed with Jeon Wonwoo despite Jeon Wonwoo being nothing but nasty to him, with the exception of when he didn’t realize who he was.

And _that_ time, he’d been totally into him, which only makes the whole situation even worse.

Soonyoung reminds himself that it’s Wonwoo’s fault he’s here in the first place; Wonwoo posted the picture, Wonwoo tried to get him caught, _arrested_ , Wonwoo put him and Chan in danger.  He scowls.  It doesn’t change the fact that Wonwoo is hot and flirted with him one time, and his shitty, gay little brain is having a hard time focusing on anything else.

Regardless of the comfort of his new bed, he’s getting antsy thinking about all this, so he sits up again, slouching horribly and rubbing his eyes.  He stands, paces uneasily for a few seconds, then peeks his head out into the hallway.  There’s no sign of Wonwoo, and his door is still shut, so Soonyoung steps out gingerly, following the hallway and finding several bookshelves and a door to a balcony around the corner at the other end.  He lets himself out, clutching his burner phone, and walks over to the railing.  He’s trying hard not to even _think_ about calling Chan, doesn’t trust himself yet to be able to talk to him without spilling the ridiculous situation he’s landed himself in.  If he doesn’t say anything, though, it means he’s a bad brother—so he bites his lip, and fires off a text: a single chicken emoji.

Chan responds almost immediately with a chicken emoji of his own followed by seven exclamation points, and Soonyoung finds himself feeling very much like a bad brother anyway.

 

— — — — —

 

Soonyoung and Wonwoo manage to avoid each other until the next morning.  Just as the sun’s coming up, Soonyoung steps out onto the balcony again and sees Wonwoo already leaning against the railing.  He peers over his shoulder when he hears the door shut, eyes narrowing and shoulders stiffening when he sees Soonyoung. Soonyoung wants nothing more than to go bother him, but also—it's so early.  He’s tired, and he misses his bed.  Minjun’s bed.  Whatever.  So he clears his throat before heading toward him.  “Should I go back in?”

He has to strain to hear Wonwoo’s answer—he doesn’t have his hearing aids in.  “Do what you want,” Wonwoo says, voice low and noncommittal and annoyed. Soonyoung walks over, leaning against the railing a couple feet down from Wonwoo.  He doesn't want to crowd him, but now his instinct to piss him off is kicking in.  He tries to suppress it, unsure yet if he feels like fighting this early in the morning.

“You smoke?” he asks, eyeing the cigarette dangling between Wonwoo’s long fingers.

His eyes flick toward Soonyoung—not directly at him, just toward the sound of his voice.  “Only when I’m angry.”  Evidently, Wonwoo feels like fighting this early in the morning.  It's almost admirable, how dedicated he is to being an asshole.

Soonyoung rolls his eyes, deciding to just go with it.  “Well, don’t keep it bottled up on my account, it’s not healthy.”  He gestures widely in front of him with one hand. “Might as well let it out.”

“I fucking hate that you’re here,” Wonwoo spits out with almost no hesitation, sharp eyes practically boring holes in Soonyoung’s face.  “Why are you _here._ ”

He already knows why Soonyoung’s here.  “Because you’re trying to get me arrested.”

“But that’s what I don’t get.  If you need to stay out of sight so badly, could you not just?  Refrain from blowing things up for awhile?  Why come here?  Isn’t it _more_ suspicious if you suddenly disappear?”

Soonyoung looks down.  He’d been up late wondering the same thing, unable to sleep from the fear that he’s being selfish _again_ , even when he’s trying not to be.  But he can’t say that.  “Maybe I just wanted to see you again.”  There's some truth to this, after all, as insane as it makes Soonyoung feel (and as much as it makes him question his own motives)—but he knows Wonwoo won't believe him, so he says it anyway.  “Maybe you were right and I _am_ a stalker.  Or maybe I have a thing for tortured, brooding assholes.”  Wonwoo takes a drag from his cigarette.  “Maybe I just like pissing you off.”

He watches Wonwoo’s mouth as smoke curls out of it.  “How would you know I’m tortured and brooding?”

 _That_ actually makes Soonyoung burst out laughing.  “Really?!  ‘Rich lonely orphan boy trying to avenge his dead parents’ is a recipe for tortured and brooding if I’ve ever heard one.”  

Still glaring, Wonwoo narrows his eyes even further.  “I don't like you, _Hoshi_.  Do you want to know why?”

Soonyoung shrugs.  “Bad taste?”

“You're a liability.  Having you here puts everything we're working for at risk.”

What a _line_.  Soonyoung raises his eyebrows and laughs through his nose.  “Has anyone ever told you you're a drama queen?”  Wonwoo’s nose wrinkles, just barely.  Apparently they have.  “First of all, your sister seems to think it’s fine, and she’s _clearly_ the brains of the operation.  Second of all,” Soonyoung turns around and leans back with his elbows propped up on the balcony rail, grinning at Wonwoo.  “You should call me Minjun.  If we're going to be partners in crime it only seems right.”

The sun is streaming up through the trees now as it clears the horizon, lighting up Wonwoo’s face and making his hair shimmer and casting his whole visage in pink and gold.  It’s fucking stupid how good looking he is, and Soonyoung is forcibly reminded of the fact that he’s been jerking off to this guy—he feels his ears heat up and he has to look away as Wonwoo starts talking again.  “We are _not_ going to be ‘partners in crime.’  If you think you’re suddenly a part of this, or something, you’re not.  I don’t care how much you know.  I don’t care what you’ve convinced my sister of.  I don’t buy it.”  He flicks ashes off the end of his cigarette.  “ _Minjun.”_

Soonyoung sighs.  “We could have just moved on with our lives, but you had to go and try to expose me.”

Stillness settles between them for a few seconds, while Wonwoo stares off toward the city and shuffles his feet restlessly before turning his head toward Soonyoung, just a bit—not enough to meet Soonyoung’s eyes, but enough that Soonyoung can see his expression has softened considerably.  It’s still serious, but not as angry, and it’s made even softer by the stupid majestic sunrise.

His voice is softer, too, when he speaks.  “The last time I saw you, you rattled off our entire plan like it was nothing.  I didn’t want you going and telling people about it.”

“So you tried to get me caught?”

“Better you than us.”

“Well—”  Soonyoung pauses.  Well.  Yeah.  “That...makes sense.  I didn’t think about that.” Wonwoo glances at him before stubbing out his cigarette and flicking it off the balcony, peering over the edge as it falls.  “I wasn’t planning to _do_ anything with that information, though.  I actually think it’s pretty badass, the whole sexy sibling revenge mission thing.  If I ignore you getting in my way, and being a fucking dickhead.” Soonyoung tilts his face up, sticks his nose in the air.  “You should really apologize.”

A smile slowly creeps across Wonwoo’s face; it’s this smarmy, shit-eating grin that makes Soonyoung want to punch him, or—just punch him.  Nothing else.  “I’m only sorry the cops were too stupid to get you out of our way for real,” he says, but it’s still not as angry as he’d been just a few minutes ago, and if Soonyoung didn’t know any better, he’d say it was almost on the side of playful.

So he smirks back at Wonwoo, quirking an eyebrow at him.  “Well, god damn, Jeon.  You could have just had someone beat my ass, or blackmailed me, or something.  You didn’t have to involve the fucking police.”

Wonwoo shakes his head.  “I didn’t involve the police.  You’d know if I had involved the police.  You’d be behind bars already if I had involved the police.”

Right.  But he didn’t.  “So basically,” Soonyoung says, gesturing in front of him as he speaks, “if I understand this whole thing correctly, you just wanted to scare me.  So I’d keep your secrets, which I was already planning to do, and so you wouldn’t have to see me again, which, you know, _clearly_ turned out exactly how you wanted.”

Wonwoo’s expression returns to a glower.  Soonyoung can tell he’s pushing his luck.  “There’s still a reward for information about you.  The picture is out there.  You could be ruined any minute.”

If Soonyoung was any kind of smart he’d leave well enough alone, but—“Yeah,” he says, batting his eyelashes, “and _you_ still tried to fuck me that night at the art gallery.  So.” He has no idea why he’s determined to ruin the almost-civility between them, but he is.  Mostly he just wants to see how Wonwoo will react, and it doesn’t disappoint: his eyes go wide for just a second and he looks away, clearly flustered, and _clearly_ pissed.  “Hey man, we’re like a hundred feet in the air on the roof of your house.  If you really want to get rid of me, give me a shove.  Right over the edge.  Literally kill me.” Wonwoo looks back at him, expression blank—only his cheeks are pink, just barely.  Success.  “That’s what I thought,” Soonyoung says, satisfied.  He’d high-five himself if he could.

As it is, he knows his face is glowing with triumph, and it seems to spur Wonwoo to regain his composure.  “It’s not too late for me to get you arrested, you know.  If I were you, I would tread lightly.” He leans in close, _too_ close, and Soonyoung sucks in a startled breath, unable to stop himself.  Wonwoo smiles.  “And stay the _fuck_ out of my way.”

He looks Soonyoung up and down.  Then he turns and goes back inside.

Soonyoung stares after him and lets out a breath, trying to force the annoyance and the sexual frustration out of his lungs.  Like, sure, he’s had several less than friendly encounters with Wonwoo, but Soonyoung had been perfectly willing to not be an asshole, so he thinks the least Wonwoo could have done is extend the same courtesy.  And maybe make out with him a little.

That’s Soonyoung’s Judas brain talking, though, and his fucking Benedict Arnold imagination running away with him.  He’s had about enough of both.  Soonyoung drops his head into his hands, and decides he’s changed his mind: the least Wonwoo can do is stop being hot, or wear a bag on his head at all times, or something.  He could probably handle him being an asshole if he wasn’t so fucking _hot_.  Unfortunately, even that probably wouldn’t help, since Wonwoo being an asshole kind of makes him even hotter, because Soonyoung’s brain and particularly his dick just will _not_ stop betraying him.

He looks up. _Why_ did he think this was a good idea, again?  Getting arrested might have been less aggravating—he’s _positive_ jail would be more welcoming.

 

When Soonyoung heads back inside he ignores the sight of Wonwoo in the kitchen, aside from huffing in exasperation and glaring at his side profile.  Once he’s in his room with the door shut, he stares at it for a second before opening it again, and making a point of slamming it as hard as he can, because he feels petty, and he wants Wonwoo to know it.  He sighs, then, and leans his forehead against the door.

He has no business being this annoyed, really, since he brought this on himself, one hundred percent.  He doesn’t even know why he’s letting Wonwoo get to him this much, but it’s his own fault for purposefully pissing him off, his own fault for coming here in the first place, his own fault for getting photographed—he makes a frustrated little noise in the back of his throat.  This train of thought is pointless.  There are years and years of events leading up to this moment, and they’re all his fault.

Chan would say otherwise.  Chan would say that just because Soonyoung chose to go somewhere and he happened to get photographed, doesn’t make it his fault—it just means it happened.  But it’s hard to believe that, especially now.

Maybe he’ll just call Chan.  He can make it through one conversation without giving away where he is, right?  Also, fuck it, because being here is _apparently_ just as reckless as staying where he was, so what does it matter?  Right?

There’s a knock on the door then, making Soonyoung jump.  He stands still for a second, and hesitantly calls out, “Who is it?”

The door opens and Soonyoung finds Minghao staring at him, eyes sharp and discerning and entirely unimpressed.

“I didn’t even say come in, you know.”

Minghao grins, and shrugs.  “It’s not really your room, you know.”

God.  God fucking damn, Soonyoung does not need _casual sass_ right now.  He rolls his eyes and then turns to flop face-first into his bed, which he’s questioning ever getting out of again.  He hears Minghao snicker behind him.  “Fuck off,” Soonyoung says, muffled into the bedcovers.

“Trouble in paradise already?”  

Soonyoung rolls over, scoffing in indignation.  “ _I_ have done _absolutely_ nothing wrong,” he grumbles.  He’s probably going to be out of the notion to even call Chan by the time Minghao leaves—simmered down enough to remember why it’s a bad idea, instead of bothered enough not to care.

“Right,” Minghao says.  “Anyway.  I need to get your phone set up with a tracker.”  

“A fucking what,” Soonyoung says.  Trackers.  Outrageous.

“A tracker.  Hand it over.  Or, whichever one you use the most, I guess,” Minghao adds, glancing toward the pile of burner phones on Soonyoung’s dresser.  Soonyoung just stares back at him, unmoving from his position on the bed.  “Fine.  All of them, then.  I couldn’t possibly have anything better to do with my time.”  With that, Minghao crosses the room and scoops up all of Soonyoung’s phones into his hands.  Soonyoung watches and blinks slowly.  Great.  Now he _definitely_ won’t be calling Chan.

It’s just that Chan would have advice.  Not that Soonyoung could even explain why he needed advice—but if he could, Chan would know what to do.  He’d give Soonyoung shit for being fixated on Wonwoo for a bit, and then when he was done he’d know what to do and he’d give Soonyoung advice.  He’d always been the smart one.  The thought has Soonyoung’s annoyance melting down into something more like sadness.

Soonyoung’s gloomy silence makes Minghao roll his eyes and plop himself down on the bed next to him.  He looks at Soonyoung for a second before taking a breath. “Listen,” he says, hesitating a little.  “Give him a second to get used to you, okay?  Between you and me, he’s not really the unshakeable wall of stone he pretends to be.” Another pause.  “Wonwoo, I mean.”

As if Soonyoung didn’t see him crack that first day at Wen Junhui’s house, hadn’t flustered him in that bathroom at the gala.  “Believe me, I know,” he simpers.  Now he’s thinking about Wonwoo caging him against that door again, like he hasn’t been plagued by that enough since it happened.  Minghao’s voice brings him out of it quick, at least, when he speaks again.

“Nah, you don’t.  Pretty sure we’re not talking about the same thing.”  He gives a small shake of his head, grinning.  “But that’s fine for now, I guess.”  Soonyoung’s eyebrows knit together in confusion as Minghao stands to leave.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” he asks.

Minghao turns around with his hand still on the doorknob.  “Just that I don’t think anything I say is gonna keep you guys from making each other miserable.”

Soonyoung lets him leave without informing him that all the phones are encrypted, just so he’ll have to drag his skinny, patronizing ass back upstairs to ask him for the codes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear the next chapter will actually have plot

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @wonuza on twitter!!! this is gonna be really really long and i'm so sorry


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